


Final Stars

by acid rounds (cobwebcorner)



Series: Things We Don't Tell Chris [3]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-09 23:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12899253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobwebcorner/pseuds/acid%20rounds
Summary: Wesker was there in the final days of Raccoon City. Unfortunately for him, nobody told Nemesis he wasn't with S.T.A.R.S. anymore.  What's left of the team may just have to band together for one last hurrah as they struggle to escape the doomed city.Hints of past Jill/Wesker.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It’s my party and I will Enemy Mine if I want to.
> 
> I wrote this mostly as a celebration of the badass that is Jill Valentine, but also partly because the idea of Nemesis going after Wesker is really funny to me.
> 
> This is going to be a slightly more serious outing, because Jill is having a very bad day and going through some things. I've also given Jill much fouler language than she has in the games. She is a tough lady, an ex Delta Force member, and a cop. It makes no sense for her not to swear.

_This September should have been just another ordinary month. It would have been, if anyone had had the courage to fight._

_You, all of you, chose not to oppose Umbrella. Now, that choice has brought this entire city to ruin._

Jill paused with her pen poised above the paper, her gaze fixed on the office door as she listened. Outside the room, there had been a footstep. Another zombie? Or was it that big ugly freak with the trench coat? A soft, gurgling moan leaked through the door, and she relaxed. It was just a zombie.

'Just' a zombie. When had this nightmare become so commonplace to her, when had she gotten so numb to it all? She looked down at the paper in her hands, and her lip curled. No one was ever going to read it. She just needed to get this out, like lancing a wound to bleed out poison.

_You will all pay for your stupidity. It is too late for forgiveness._

_Once the wheel of fate has begun to turn, no one can stop it._

_Am I the only one who understands? This is our last September...._

She couldn't think of anything else to say. The shuffling had stopped outside. If she was lucky, maybe that trench coat freak had left the building.

As an afterthought, she signed her name to the bottom of the note, and left it on her desk. It felt good to leave it there, a final "fuck you" to the city that had failed her, failed itself. Like shaking the dust from her shoes.

Jill Valentine reloaded her gun, opened the door, and left the S.T.A.R.S. office for the hell that had become Raccoon.


	2. Reunion

Jill pressed her back to the railing, ignoring the bite of cold iron against her bare shoulders. Around the corner, the smoking ruins of Raccoon Hospital crackled with flame, the occasional zombie staggering against the smoke. One much larger, stockier figure paced in front of the clock tower door. From a distance it could almost pass as a man. Almost. The growth of purple tentacles protruding from a gash in its back was a dead giveaway.

"S.T.A.R.S...." It hissed.

Jill drew her head back and closed her eyes. Nemesis, the survivor's report had called it. Nikolai had all but confirmed that it was here for her, the final remaining S.T.A.R.S. member in town. It seemed so petty of Umbrella, like sending a dog down after a groundhog when you were about to collapse its tunnels anyway. Maybe they were afraid she would survive again. Make no mistake, Raccoon City’s clock was ticking down fast. She had doubled back in order to find Carlos, to warn him about Nikolai, the supervisors, and the missile launch scheduled to wipe Raccoon off the map.

She wiped her sopping bangs out of her face, smearing grave dirt on her forehead. In retrospect, the trip through the cemetery had been a bad idea. The dead were no more content to sit in graves than they were to lie quietly in the streets. Then, there had been that disgusting giant worm. Another Umbrella monster, or an accidental freak, it didn't matter.

The distant cries of the dead echoed off the buildings, adding ambiance to the crackling of the fire. Over that, she could just make out the heavy treads of the creature’s boots. Back and forth, back and forth, not leaving, no matter how hard she willed for it to do so.

Nothing else for it. She ducked from wrecked car to wrecked car, crouched low. Through the broken windows she could glimpse the Nemesis’s ugly mug lurking right outside the guardhouse. Was it smart enough to look through windows? Was it trying to pick up her scent? The thing didn’t even have a nose. Maybe it couldn’t smell at all.

While Nemesis was preoccupied with staring at the guardhouse wall, Jill dashed inside the clock tower, shut the door behind her, and leaned against it to catch her breath. The Nemesis hadn't seen her, wasn't coming after her, yet she still felt the itch of Its eye on her. Another phantom conjured by her own anxiety, that was all.

She was in. Now she just had to deliver her message, and hope to god that thing was gone by the time she came back. It would be a short but winding trip through the bizarre architecture of the old clock tower. They had cleared out most of the zombies already, she and Carlos together. If Nemesis and the runaway rail car hadn’t busted so many holes in the walls, the building would almost have been safe.

Still she kept her gun close as she crossed the room. The itch hadn't gone away, and she could still hear Nemesis's growls through the wall. She went out into the S hallway, kicking the thick spiderwebs out of her way.

Footsteps pattered away nearby, quick and sure, too coordinated to belong to a zombie, too light to belong to Nemesis. Could it be Carlos? She didn’t call out. Carlos wasn’t the only survivor wandering around, just the only one left who didn’t want her dead.

A lone giant spider twitched in the corner, leaking vital fluids on to the floor. Whoever it was ahead of her, they’d been busy clearing out the trash. That meant they were armed. The thought provided no comfort.

As she rounded the second corner of the winding hallway, she caught a glimpse of a blond head vanishing through the doorway. She hadn't met a single blond survivor so far, and that man hadn't been wearing the U.B.C.S. uniform.

Jill broke out into a sprint. She barged through the door after the mystery man, gun lowered down along with her caution. At the sound of her entrance, the man turned away from the bookcases, the dim lamp light glinting off his sunglasses.

It wasn't Nikolai, Carlos, or Nemesis, but she did know that face. She knew its straight, long nose, knew the sharp, solid jaw, the thin lips, the broad shoulders. She remembered kissing those lips, once, and dragging her nails over those shoulders, and running her hands through that golden hair. The very first thing she did when the recognition hit, before any implications could sink in, was to roundhouse kick that asshole right in the chin. He staggered back, caught his legs on a chair, and fell right on his tight ass.

It was only afterward, as she stood staring down at him, that a few critical details about their last encounter returned to mind. The last time she saw him, he had been dangling in the air on the claw of a Tyrant, blood dripping off his swaying feet. He couldn't be here. His corpse should have been immolated in the explosion. For a horrible moment she was sure she had made a mistake and attacked some innocent doppleganger, but no. Albert Wesker, shitmaster general, looked up and smiled at her.

“Hello dear,” he said.

“Wesker? How are you alive?”

“I’m hardly the only dead man walking around these days, am I?” He fixed his askew sunglasses.

She wanted to kick him again, until confetti came out, but she restrained herself. Instead, she trained her gun between his eyes.

“Oh, don’t waste your bullets, Jill. Resources are scarce.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just hope you’ll get eaten. Or, how about I turn you over to Umbrella? I bet they’d be really interested to hear their rogue operative is still alive.”

He moved in the space of a blink, and the next thing she knew her legs had been kicked out from underneath her. Before she even hit the ground, he had seized her by the neck and shoulder and slammed her up against the wall. The captain had always been the best of them all at close combat, but he'd never moved this fast before.

He pinned her there, one hand pressing just hard enough to make breathing difficult, the other digging dents into her shoulder.

"It's so amusing that you think you could drag me anywhere," he purred.

She shoved her gun under his chin and cocked it.

"I don't have to do any dragging, if you don't want more holes in you."

This only made his smile even sharper, like he considered a bullet through his skull an amusing diversion. Maybe he did. She’d never asked what he did with his Friday nights.

"Don't think I'll do it?" she hissed. "After all the shit you pulled? All my friends that you killed?"

"Umbrella killed them, dear. Their orders, remember?"

“But you were more than happy to pull the trigger, you slimy—”

"S.T.A.R.S."

Time froze. Wesker's face jerked to the side, his grip slackening. Jill hardly paid him mind, her own senses on high alert for the source of that growl. Above? Or just past the wall? She couldn't feel the tremor of its footsteps. She searched the ceiling for shaken dust.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes, the silence stretched on unbroken.

She had had it with their intimate position. She pulled the combat knife from her belt and gave it a new home in Wesker's thigh. He doubled over, and she followed up with a knee to his stomach, booting him off of her. As soon as she was free she scrambled to put distance between them, her gun raised in warning.

He yanked the knife from his thigh, chuckling through grit teeth.

“For what it’s worth, Jill, I’m glad you survived,” Wesker said. He took off through the door beside them at a limping run. Seconds later, Nemesis burst through the opposite wall, smashing the corner desk in the process.

“Figures,” Jill hissed. “Took the long way around, huh freak?”

“S.T.A.R.S.!” Nemesis roared in response.

As much as she hated to follow Wesker, she wasn’t left much choice. It was go out into the main lobby, take the other door and get cornered in a dead end, or run towards Nemesis and hope to reach the door back to the spider hall before It reached her. She picked the lesser evil, and pursued the jerk who didn’t have tentacles.

Wesker was gone by the time she made it through the door. The main lobby had really been trashed to hell during the day she'd lost to fever and the T-virus. There were broken pillars and masonry piled up everywhere, with even more loose debris littering the floor. One strategically placed pile of junk had fallen on to the stairs, blocking access to anyone but the most determined.

She wasn’t in the mood to play tag with Nemesis, and she didn’t have the ammo to lay him out. That left hiding, and the only promising spot in reach looked like that table next to the stairs. Nemesis pounded on the door behind her as she ran. The whole hall seemed to shake with every blow, and the ominous crackle of splintering wood reverberated through the cavernous room.

She slid under the table just in time to watch the door fly across the room, hit the floor, and skid three feet.

“S.T.A.R.S.”

All she could see as Nemesis charged in front of her were its enormous black combat boots. She didn’t envy Umbrella the task of finding clothing that fit their monster. They must have raided every Big and Tall store in the district. You could fit an entire raccoon in that boot.

Nemesis didn’t run right past her, like she’d been hoping it would. It seemed to twist around, looking for her, and then it began to pace back and forth while growling to itself. She tightened her fingers around the grip of her weapon. If the Nemesis decided to peek under the table, she’d be ready to greet it with a slug of lead in its remaining eye.

After a while it circled the stairs and stopped near the old music box. Quiet as could be, Jill eased herself out from under the table and pressed up against the side of the stairs. She could just see the back of its head, angled downward. Maybe it did want the music box. Hell if she could guess what went through Its head.

A flash of gold above. There was Wesker, crouched on the second floor landing and peeking down over it to watch the monster below him. Before, Wesker had frozen at the sound of its voice, same as Jill had. He must have known what it was. Even more telling, he’d taken off like a shot as soon as he realized it was nearly on them.

Which meant it was a danger to him.

For the first time in days, Jill’s lips tugged up into a smile. Just a small one, a faint twitch of the cheeks, but a smile nonetheless. Nemesis wanted S.T.A.R.S., huh? Well there was one surviving member right in front of her who she’d be happy to sacrifice.

Quietly she bent, snatching up a half brick from the debris scattered about the floor. This she aimed and threw, nailing the balcony rail right below Wesker’s head with a loud thunk. Her ex-captain startled backwards at the noise just as Nemesis looked up and spotted him.

“S.T.A.R.S.!” It roared, before leaping up to the middle of the stairs and making a beeline towards him.

Jill choked down a cackle at Wesker’s obvious shock and distress. Captain Asshole turned and booked it, giant freak job on his tail. Wasn’t that a perfect couple.

“I’m going to kill whoever programmed you!” She heard Wesker bellow in the distance.

Two birds with one stone. She felt pretty proud of herself as she left the lobby.

“Carlos!” she hissed as she searched the chapel, afraid to talk any louder. They’d agreed he would meet her here as soon as each finished their own separate explorations, but the U.B.C.S. member was nowhere in sight.

She didn’t have time. She’d just have to leave a note.

‘ _Carlos, I’m sorry but I couldn’t wait for you. I just found out the city is going to be wiped out by a missile at daybreak. We have to get out of here, now._

_Be careful of anyone else from U.B.C.S. Nikolai--no, all the supervisors, their orders were to make sure none of their men made it out alive._

_I’m heading back through the park. It looks like the only way out of the city from here. Try to catch up, ok?_

_\--Jill’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So normally I like to post once a week, however, between a few looming deadlines and the holidays I am going to be a little too busy. Expect to see more updates for this story starting in January.


	3. In Deep Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jill takes a walk in the park and meets some unfriendly faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended background music for this fic, and a good Jill song in general: This is a Call, by Les Friction

The hospital fire still raged as Jill exited the clock tower. A small troop of burning zombies stumbled out of the cloud of smoke, arms outstretched towards her. She gave them a cold look and walked up the stone stairs, not even wasting a bullet on them.

Though it was the last place she wanted to trudge through again, it seemed she had no choice but to head back for Raccoon City Park: Round Two. All the other roads were blocked by wrecked cars or mobs of the undead. No mucking around this time, she told herself as she threw open the front gate. This time, she would go straight for the back gate of the park and haul herself over that locked fence.

The widespread destruction of the city hadn't reached the park yet, maybe because it was so close to the city outskirts. That wasn't to say it was safe. She could hear things shuffling in the grass just outside the fences, moaning things with raspy breathing. Give it another hour, and the hospital fire would probably consume the trees lining the fences.

Whatever city planner had designed the place had had a major thing for ornamental pools and bridges. She'd always found it funny that the park had more water than grass. It must have been cheaper to upkeep.

Worms jumped out at her from the central pool as she ran by, all just as mad and mutated as every other living thing the virus touched. These were so big they could have passed for stubby boa snakes.

“Get off,” she hissed, kicking off one that had latched on to her boot. They weren't much of a threat, compared to their big, big brother that had attacked her in the graveyard.

Just past the park benches she took a right, stomping down the stairs to the pond. It was quieter here, with only the gentle patter of rain and the creaking of crickets. Bodies floated in the blue-green water, occasionally bumping into the supports for the statues. She set out across the wooden walkway, her eyes glued to the water's surface, alert for signs of anything lurking underneath.

She didn't notice the trail of fresh, muddy footprints newly stamped on to the boards until they ended. Someone else had run this way, someone wearing combat boots that were just about Wesker's size. Had Wesker lost the Nemesis already? Or was this the spot where he'd gone the same way as Brad? There was no sign of the body.

It would serve him right, after all he did. There was a small cluster of gravestones that she'd had to pass twice now, empty graves with the names of lost friends, all put there thanks to Albert Wesker. 'Umbrella killed them' her ass.

He could have saved them. All he'd had to do was cancel the mission. But no, he had to collect his precious combat data. He had to threaten Barry's family and manipulate the poor man into betraying them. Then he'd just turned around and died, making the whole rest of it--all those deaths, all that loss--for fucking nothing.

How he had managed to come back from that, she couldn't fathom. Maybe the whole thing had been a hallucination, the fault of her exhausted brain still getting over her T-Virus infection. It just figured it would be him, of all the ghosts her mind could have conjured from—

"S.T.A.R.S."

That growl froze her heart every time. Shit, shit shit, it sounded close, and this place was completely open and exposed. Coming this way might have been a mistake. She had nowhere to hide here, nothing that could drive it off, nothing but water and corpses in every direction. Nothing else for it. With a grimace, she slipped down off the walkway and into the water, taking pains to splash as little as possible. The water of the man-made pond came up to about shoulder-height, and rippled about her neck as she slipped underneath the walkway.

A gun cocked behind her. She whipped around, pointing her own firearm in the direction of the sound. The wavering light reflected from the water danced over Wesker’s face, splintering light over the smooth plastic of his sunglasses. Wesker’s hair and shoulders were covered in a light layer of marble dust, and a flower of sticky red had opened on his left temple. It looked like someone had taken a hit to the head and then had a long fall into a pile of rubble, where he belonged.

They’d both had the same idea. Perfect. Jill’s lip curled, while Wesker remained neutral. The walkway shook above them. Nemesis wasn’t bellowing yet, but she could hear its heavy breathing over the stamping of its boots. If either she or Wesker shot right now, they were going to have 8 feet of ugly mutant tearing down on them. If they so much as sneezed, Nemesis would hear them.

A worm snaked through the water, wide mouth gnawing at the current, lazily making its way toward Jill. It hissed in threat. The footsteps paused above them.

Wesker struck faster than a snake, impaling the worm on his combat knife and pinning it to one of the walkway supports. It made only the softest of thunks, and the worm’s hissing died into a gurgle. Silence hung. At last, the footsteps resumed, and Nemesis turned back, retreating back towards the center of the park.

Jill and Wesker stayed where they were, guns pointed at each other. The worm dripped blood down the walkway support and twitched, gently. Jill sighed.

“I am so sick of that guy.”

“As am I,” Wesker replied. “Aren’t there any other S.T.A.R.S. members left in town for him to harass?”

“You know there aren’t.”

“At least five of you survived the mansion. I will be very disappointed if that prototype manages to finish the task I failed. What about Chris? Where is he?”

“Not here.”

“Somewhere else in town?”

“Not. Here,” She grit out. Because Chris had gotten his stupid ass fired, had run off to Europe half-cocked the way he always did. Barry had left too, but she couldn’t blame him for that. He had family to worry about. And Rebecca, she'd quit as soon as they made it back from the mansion. Jill couldn't blame her, either. If her very first mission in the field had been that nightmare, she'd have sworn off being a cop forever.

Jill had stayed because she had to. There was too much unfinished business here. Someone had to look into the Racoon lab, had to keep tabs on Umbrella’s golden city. In the end, she hadn’t accomplished jack shit. What had she thought she could do, all alone, with half the city against her? In the end she'd been too slow, day late, dollar short, not enough backup. Now the whole city was paying for it.

She and Wesker were the only S.T.A.R.S. members left now. The thought churned in her gut.

“Don’t tell me. He ran off and left you to clean up the mess, like usual,” Wesker said.

Jill slammed her fist into the pole below the worm. “Shut up. You don’t get to talk.”

“I suppose not.” He smirked. “And Vickers?”

She swallowed and looked away. She’d never been close to Brad, true. He’d been as useful as a limp dishrag ever since Arklay, always wanting to toe the line, afraid of catching Umbrella’s attention. Fat lot of good it had done him. His death still stung, with the bonus guilty pang that she had failed him.

“I see,” Wesker said. “Then we two are the only ones standing between Nemesis and the completion of its mission. No wonder it is being so tenacious.”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Jill said. She had to spit the words out to keep the bad taste from lingering on her tongue. “You help me with that freak, and I won’t tell Umbrella that you’re still alive.”

Wesker considered her.

“You realize that if you did tell, you would only be adding to Nikolai’s pay bonus?”

“Nikolai? You know him? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I bet you were best friends at the office, huh? You're just like each other.”

Wesker's face twitched.

“You’re both assholes,” she said. “So I’m going to favor the one willing to be more useful to me. What do you say?”

“Or I could just kill you now.”

“And be the only one left for Nemesis to chase.”

Wesker was quiet for a long, uneasy minute. He'd always taken his time deciding things, considering the problem from every angle. Jill used to admire him for it.

“Fine,” Wesker replied, more easily than she'd expected. “I suppose we can cooperate, for one last mission.”

Jill let out a deep breath, willing her anger to go out with it.

“Then let’s stop standing around in the water before we get leeches.”

They shuffled out from underneath their shelter. Wesker jumped up and grasped the end of the walkway, pulling himself up. He turned and watched as Jill did the same, not bothering to help her up. At least he knew better than to offer. She might have stabbed his hand if he tried.

“So. Any ideas?” she asked.

"Umbrella has a treatment plant just past the cemetery. There's equipment there for B.O.W. disposal. We just might be able to unmake this pest if we lure it that way."

"You're not talking about that old, abandoned factory?"

"That's the front."

“Alright. Then we’ll head to this factory. It’s right on the outskirts of town, so it should be easy to escape Raccoon from there.”

“Unless the blockades are still up,” Wesker said. “But let’s focus on one problem at a time, shall we?”

Jill turned back and searched the banks of the pond for any sign of a hulking figure. Nemesis was nowhere in sight.

“Yeah. Let’s go. After you, _captain_.”

Wesker smirked.

“I’ll see you there, darling,” he said, and ran off down the walkway.

“What—wait a minute!” she called after him, giving chase. God, he really was even faster than she remembered. No matter how hard she pushed herself, she couldn’t keep up with him, and soon enough he vanished into the trees on the other side of the pond. Well, never mind him. As long as he wasn’t actively trying to kill her, she’d consider that contribution enough on his part. When she arrived back on solid ground, there was no evidence of Wesker’s passing save a few footprints in the mud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this took so long, guys! I had to get some original work submitted before deadlines and I wanted to get the Christmas fic finished and posted before, well, Christmas. And THEN, I kicked off the new year by spraining my ankle!
> 
> So to make a long story short (too late), life happened, but we muscle through it. Thank you for all the support you've all given me so far, I can't put into words how inspiring all your kudos and comments are.


	4. The Dead Factory

The back of the park was all dense trees lining winding dirt pathways, a once haven for city dwellers looking for a little nature on their lunch breaks. The occasional zombie lurched over the fences towards Jill, slow enough that she could simply run past them, just as Wesker must have.

She’d been back this way before, briefly, until she’d run against the locked gate that resisted all efforts from her lock picks. There had been a corpse in U.B.C.S. gear on the ground before, but it had since wandered off. The lock that had once given her so much trouble now lay on the ground in pieces, apparently bent and snapped by something. Maybe Wesker had had some bolt cutters on him.

She pushed the creaking gate open, her gun up and at the ready. This was new territory, and she wasn’t sure what to expect. Knowing there was an Umbrella facility nearby only added to her tension.

All that time she’d been hunting Raccoon for evidence against Umbrella, sniffing around for the elusive underground laboratory, and she’d never heard anything about this place. The abandoned factory on the outskirts of Raccoon had always been just another sign of deserted industry, another business muscled out of town by the tyranny of Umbrella. As far as she remembered, the police had never needed to sweep the place for squatters or chase off vandals. The property had always seemed quiet, unremarkable. Now she knew why.

Umbrella had its own ways of dealing with intruders.

The Arklay river had carved a small canyon between the park and the factory. An old rope bridge connected the two sides, many of its boards rotted and broken. It looked about as sturdy as a three story straw hut, but she didn't have much choice if she wanted to cross that gap.

A blond shadow shifted near the factory entrance. Wesker had folded himself into a dark spot near the factory door, though he showed no interest in actually entering. If he had made it across, then she could too. She gingerly took one step out on to the bridge, and when the rope held, she kept going.

She was about halfway across when Wesker called out, "Jill, stop!"

She wouldn't have listened, except she noticed the way his head was tilted down, like he was looking at something underneath the bridge. A tentacle lashed upwards in a shower of splinters, whipping through the air a foot from her face. She backpedaled, narrowly avoiding the strikes of three more tentacles. Goddamn it, how did this asshole keep catching up to them? Could it teleport? Had it been _hiding under the bridge?_

Something big landed on the bridge behind her, the impact swinging the contraption wildly from side to side. She stumbled and turned. The Nemesis, or course, what else would it be? It straightened from its crouch, its tentacles writhing in agitation.

Jill backed away, thinking quickly. Should she jump? There was deep water right below her, and the canyon was only about twenty feet deep. She might survive the landing. If Nemesis jumped after her, though, she’d be a sitting duck out in the water.

Nemesis arched Its back, roaring at the sky. Jill ran up against one of the gaps in the bridge, and could back up no farther. She could see only one solution, and it involved Nemesis hurtling down into the river below.

The B.O.W. might have been big, and strong, and fast, but it wasn't much smarter than a zombie. It always telegraphed its attacks, and it did the same this time, winding its arm back. She darted underneath Its lunge, slipping past its side as it struggled to hold its balance. Then, she thrust the heels of both palms into its side and shoved with all her might.

Between the unsteadiness of the bridge and the fact It was already off balance after missing Its swing, she had just enough strength to send the brute tumbling off the side of the bridge.

Nemesis wasn’t finished. A tentacle swung up over the side, latched around Jill’s ankle, and pulled her down off the bridge. She yelled in surprise and only just managed to grab hold of the bridge at the last moment.

She got lucky. Nemesis’s tentacles might have been strong enough to hold up a human, but they couldn’t support the B.O.W.’s own body weight. The appendage snapped off as soon as the Nemesis’s full weight bore on it, and Nemesis went on plunging into the river. Jill sucked a strangled breath into her lungs, straining to hold on even as her arms and shoulders screamed. She had to pull herself up. She had to get up. She was _not_ going to fall right into the Nemesis’ arms. She had come too far to die now.

Footsteps, and creaking from the bridge above her. Wesker stepped into view, looking down at her with his blank face. Jill glared up at him, daring him to finish what he’d started on that nightmarish mission months ago. She didn’t have the strength to hold herself up with one hand and pull her gun.

He knelt down, grabbed her wrist, and pulled upward, lifting her as if she weighed no more than a doll. She cried out, the movement wrenching her shoulder even more. He held her in the air for a little longer than he really needed to, long enough that she began to brace herself for the moment he would let her plunge down into the water. It was a shock when he set her down on solid planks, safe on the bridge.

They looked at each other, and neither one spoke, the rain leaving trails down their faces.

“Jill!” Carlos’s voice, hollering from behind the gate.

Wesker stepped back from her, and then he ran back towards the factory, so quickly Jill could barely track his movements.

“This doesn’t erase anything!” she screamed at his retreating back. And it didn’t, it really didn’t. He could save her life a hundred times, and it would never make up for everything he had taken from her.

Carlos came crashing through the gate, his assault rifle in hand, twigs caught in his hair.

“What?”

“Carlos. I’m glad you’re safe,” she said, and meant it, even if she was too tired to smile.

“Yeah, somehow. Listen, Jill, I just saw that big monster run this way. He was--”

“It’s okay. He’s in the river now.”

“Whew. Close call, huh? Sorry I wasn’t here to save the day.” He jogged up to her, not minding the precarious swaying of the bridge at all.

Jill just shook her head, and finished crossing to the other side with Carlos just a step behind her.

“I saw your note. If they’re really going to launch a missile at daybreak, then we don’t have much time left. We need to find a way out of this place as soon as possible.”

“You’re right. We should split up and search for a way.”

“Split up again? Are you sure? There’s bound to be more zombies inside. And, that big guy might be lurking around.”

“I’m sure.”

Carlos had nearly gotten killed once by Nemesis, while trying to help her. She wasn’t going to put him in extra danger if she didn’t have to. She owed him that much, at least. He had saved her life by bringing her the cure to the T-Virus.

“Alright. And hey, be sure to watch out for that traitor Nikolai, OK?” Carlos made an aborted motion to reach out for her, then pulled his hand back. He shrugged the moment off with an attempt at his best cool guy pose—gun on shoulder, hand on hip, mouth quirked in a cheeky smile—and then he vanished through the front door.

“Take care of yourself,” she called after him.

A chuckle rolled out of the shadows.

“You work fast,” Wesker said, emerging from a hidden spot behind a rock.

“Shut up. It’s not like that.”

“Perhaps not. But it seems he would like it to be.”

Jill shook her head. Carlos was just the flirty type. If he liked the look of a person, he’d hit on them, plain and simple.

“I admit, I’m surprised that you would work with any of Umbrella’s mercenaries.”

“None of this is their fault. They didn’t even know what they were getting into. They’re just more disposable pawns for Umbrella to throw at their experiments.”

“Most of them, yes.”

Jill reached for the door and paused, struck by a thought.

“Earlier, you said something about Nikolai’s bonus. You know who he is?”

“He’s one of the supervisors. A true Umbrella man, not just a hired gun. The company provides them incentives to dispose of anyone Umbrella might find...undesirable.”

“How did you know _I_ knew him?”

“I have my own eyes within the city. Most of them are dead by now, but a few are still feeding me information.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

“When you happen to cross my path.”

She wanted to yell at him, but if she started now she wasn’t going to stop. Besides, knowing him like she did, he might like that. They didn’t have time for it.

“You’re a creep, Wesker.”

He looked, as always, utterly unrepentant.

 

Jill opened the factory door. Carlos was long gone, so it was safe for her and Wesker to enter. The factory was just as she’d been expecting: cold, steel, industrial. The only surprising thing about it was the newness of its interior, compared to the outside. It had been kept in working order alright. 

At least, the facility had been in good shape before the outbreak. It was a mess now, but the red-brown splattered all over the walls and floor was blood, not rust. Naturally, the place was crawling with zombies. Jill and Wesker took their time wiping out the shambling horrors with careful head shots, barely pausing their conversation to fire.

“What kind of facility did you say this was?”

“Disposal. Zombies and mutants are only an unwanted byproduct of Umbrella’s experiments, you must realize. There’s no point in keeping them around. However, the bodies need special treatment to break them down in such a way that the virus is annihilated, too.”

“How are they destroyed? Burning?”

“Too energy-costly. It’s chemical baths, for the most part.” Wesker looked around, as casual as a tourist in a chocolate factory. “They call it the ‘dead factory,’” he said.

“Charming,” Jill grunted. “So, what’s your plan? Shove Nemesis in a chemical vat and watch him melt?”

“For a start.”

They entered the first unlocked door they came across, which turned out to be some kind of office. It was a complete mess, drinks and papers everywhere, potted plants stuffed on top of filing cabinets, office supplies mingling with spare ammunition in little heaps on the desks. Jill walked around and helped herself to the supplies while Wesker laid a map out over the table.

On one of the desks, she found a diary from the 'dead factory's' manager. Wesker seemed preoccupied figuring out their course, so she read through a few pages. Immediately, she regretted the decision. Just skimming through it made her sick. How anyone could write so coldly about disposing of so many human corpses was mind-boggling to her. Umbrella had been dumping so many bodies here that their vats had gotten backed up. Just how many people had they killed? Were they experiments, trespassers, or just people who had gotten on Umbrella's bad side?

"Why does anyone ever work for Umbrella," she muttered to herself.

“Money. Power. The best biomedical research facilities in the country. A special kind of madness. Take your pick.”

Jill huffed and thew the diary down.

“Here’s what we want,” Wesker told her, pointing out a room on the map. “This is the disposal chamber. We’ll need a system disk to unlock it.”

“And then we have to think of a way to lure It in there.”

“That won’t be difficult. We’re the two things in this city that Nemesis wants most,” Wesker said. A soft beep came from his pocket. He ignored it. “I think I have an idea where the disk might be. Feel free to explore while I go and get it.”

Without another word, he left the map behind and exited the room. Jill narrowed her eyes at the abrupt exit. System disk, huh. Yeah. Sure. Always disappearing on her, that Wesker, even when they were supposed to be working together. She didn't like it. It reminded her too much of his behavior back in the Arklay mansion, and it was a complete 180 from the team captain who used to stick close to his team at all times. A Wesker out of sight was a Wesker free to get up to mischief.

She'd wait until he was in the middle of whatever he really wanted to do, and then she'd catch him in the middle of it. Wesker still had plenty of secrets to keep from her, and she was as determined as ever to suss them out. She gave him a five minute head start as she bent over the map, determining their route to the room they needed. As long as she was out, she might as well make sure their way was clear.

The way was not clear. She discovered this almost immediately, as the very first door she needed to pass was sealed tight with a metal shutter. The panel beside it was flashing warning messages about some kind of lock down.

“Goddammit, why does nothing ever work during an outbreak?” she hissed.

Calm down Jill, she told herself. Gotta find a way to unlock the door...or break through it. She would be happy to take the explosive option if it became viable. As she continued her exploration, she heard Wesker’s voice drifting from a nearby control room.

“...missed quite a few things during your nap. There are two things you must be made aware of. One, in less than an hour, Raccoon City will be completely eradicated by a government launched missile. And two, in about ten minutes, an umbrella officer will be leaving town on a helicopter. If you are not on it, there will be no way for you to leave Raccoon city.”

Jill’s hands curled into fists. Wesker knew about an intact helicopter? Why the hell weren’t they heading for it?

“You don’t give a girl much time,” A female voice replied to him, slightly distorted, as if over a speaker phone.

“Perhaps if you had not been fashionably late. The helicopter will be leaving from Banks Street. Take Anderson’s hookshot with you to intercept it. He won’t be needing it anymore.”

All at once, the anger and the hope drained from Jill in a rush. Banks street was on the other side of town, past the roaring wall of fire. Even if they had had another rail car to hurtle past the fire on, they would never make it over there in time.

“And, Ada? Don’t die. The g-virus sample is required.”

Jill’s eyes narrowed. That name, G-virus, struck a bell in her memory. About a month ago, she’d been startled awake at 3 am by a phone call from Chris. He’d babbled a lot of things about an underground laboratory, and a new virus. G, he had called it. Then he’d dropped the bombshell that he was running off to Europe to take Umbrella out at their source. The words had shaken her awake.

“Wait a minute. You’re leaving? What about Raccoon? You just said there’s another laboratory here!”

“They’ve got labs everywhere, Jill. We can’t get anywhere in Raccoon. If we don’t cut them off at the source, they’re just going to keep coming.”

“What if there’s an accident in that lab, just like at Arklay? It could make a disaster a hundred times worse than what we saw at the mansion. You want to what, just, abandon Raccoon?”

“I’ll leave that to you, Jill.”

She hadn’t been awake enough to talk him out of it. Hadn’t found all the words she needed to yell at him. So Chris had left, slipped away in the middle of the night, and two whittled down to one. She hadn’t even thought about the G-virus, specifically, not since that call. All her focus had been on the lab itself, and the web of corruption Umbrella had woven through all of the city’s leaders.

The door opened beside her, and Wesker walked out. Jill folded her arms and leaned her hip against the wall, looking straight up into his shaded eyes. She made no effort to pretend she hadn't been standing outside and listening in.

“Find your disk?” she asked.

Wesker smirked at her. “I have what I need,” he replied, and moved to brush past her.

“Trying to get your hands on another virus?” she spoke up suddenly, stopping him in his tracks. “You just don’t learn, do you?”

“On the contrary, Jill. Lately I've learned a number of...interesting things.” The way he said it put her on edge. It was like he was hinting at something.

And she _really_ didn't like the look of his smile.


	5. Old Friends

“Who was that?” Jill demanded.

“Now, Jill. You can't expect me to give up all my secrets just because you ask nicely,” Wesker scolded, still smiling.

He walked off, ignoring her burning glare. So, he wasn't working alone, and he had come back to Raccoon for a specific goal. Jill filed this new information away and fell into step behind him.

“I hope you haven’t been wasting all of your time spying on me,” Wesker said.

“I found the door we need to pass through in order to get to that chemical vat. It’s locked.”

A little furrow knit Wesker's brow, the same one that used to appear whenever Forest and Chris had done something particularly stupid. He took a sharp left and stalked over to the door in question.

“I didn't see a slot for a keycard,” she said as he examined the door's control panel.

“It's the automated lock down,” he said after a moment. “The factory's sensors must have detected the outbreak and attempted to cut it off. A more than useless gesture, when the entire city is already overrun.”

“The front door was wide open,” Jill pointed out.

“Typical Umbrella incompetence,” Wesker replied. He folded his arms and glared at the door. “We need to fool the sensors into thinking everything is alright.”

“Okay. How do we do that?”

"There's two different sensors we have to trick, one for water and one for air. The water testing equipment should be on the lower floor. Jill, you go down and handle the water test. I'll handle the sensor up here."

Jill narrowed her eyes. “Splitting up again,” she observed, toneless.

“Afraid I might get up to mischief? Don't worry, darling. It's as you said: if you die, then I'll be left to deal with the Nemesis by myself.”

Her eye twitched at the pet name. She wanted to bark at him to quit it, that the old joke had belonged to STARS and it should have died with them.

It had started all the way back on her first day. Someone, she couldn't remember who, had made a tasteless joke about her being the new team mom. She'd never forget the way the blood drained out of everyone's faces when she walked right up to her new captain and called him 'honey.' Wesker hadn't missed a beat. He'd called her 'darling.'

The rest of the department must have thought S.T.A.R.S. was crazy. Not only did the rear guard and the captain talk to each other like a married couple, but nobody ever called Wesker sir or captain, two of their members were always causing mayhem in the suburbs with handmade explosives, Wesker ordered the chief around like he owned the place, and neither team even had a medic until right before the end.

Fuck, she missed them.

"You killing me is the last thing I'm worried about, _honey_ ," she said, dripping as much venom into the pet name as possible.

His smile was as wide and white as a crescent moon. "We're running low on time, Jill. As pleasant as your company is, things will go faster if we split up."

"Fine. How do I get to the water tester?"

"That elevator right there will bring you down to the second level." He gestured to the metal doors they'd passed.

"Alright." Jill split off from him and entered the elevator.

Wesker started laughing behind her.

"What?" she asked.

"It's so cute that you still follow my orders."

"Fuck off," she told him, and the doors closed on his smug smile.

All that mattered right now was survival, she told herself as the elevator descended. If Wesker could help her do that, then she would exploit him as long as possible. They could both exploit each other. Whatever it took to get out of Raccoon alive.

 

There was danger in this, she reflected as she fought her way through a small cluster of hunters waiting at the base of the elevator. For a moment back there, standing in the rain on that bridge, she’d seen a dead man. Not Wesker, former agent of Umbrella, but her captain. The man who had led his team into the breach a thousand times, and always brought them all out safely. The one male coworker who had never condescended to her, never doubted her ability, but always had her back. The man who had died long before a tyrant claw had gouged through his stomach.

That man had never really existed. And yet, she grieved for him just as she grieved for Joseph, and Richard, and Ken, and all the rest. Grief was natural, the department mandated therapist had told her. You had to let yourself mourn before you could move on. Hard to do when the dead man in question kept walking around, doing confusing things like saving her life.

His knowing smile still haunted her. What the hell had he meant, looking at her that way while he purred about 'learning new things'? She booted open another door and fired a shotgun shell point blank into a zombie's face. Its head exploded into a red mist, showering the floor with chunks of skull and brain. The body staggered forward for two steps before it got the memo and collapsed into a twitching heap.

Something wasn't adding up, she thought as she stepped over the corpse. Maybe Wesker had just been messing with her to nudge her off track, but she couldn't help this itching dread that she had forgotten something.

She found an old, pure water sample in one of the cabinets. Now all she needed was to find the sensor. She could kick herself for not asking Wesker more about the machine. She had no idea what she was looking for, nor how to use the machine. It was too bad they didn't have radios. At least then she could have called him--

Oh. Oh, fuck. The _phone calls._

Jill stopped dead in the doorway, remembering, now, exactly what had been nagging her. After Arklay, on the night that she, Chris, Barry, and Rebecca had all gone out drinking to wipe the memories of the mansion from their brains, Jill had gone home piss drunk and called up Wesker's cell phone. There had been no answer, of course, only the monotone computer voice asking her to leave a message. She'd let all the anger and betrayal and grief out in one long, ugly, slurred rant.

It had become a habit, in the weeks of frustration that followed, to call up Wesker's dead voice mail and yell at his memory. Usually she did it drunk. It had been a safe outlet, better than the therapist, better than trying to talk to the other survivors.

Had he...listened to all of those? She didn't even remember most of what she'd said. The thought was mortifying. Those messages had been meant for the dead captain, not the live betrayer. A scream from above broke into her thoughts. She turned on her heel and shot just as the hunter jumped out of the vent, hitting it in the stomach and slamming it into the wall. She kept shooting until it stopped squirming, then hissed a breath out through her teeth. Goddamn monsters, never let her stop and think about anything.

She tried to put the phone calls out of her head, and kept hunting around the lower floor until she found the machine she needed. Ten minutes of dicking around with the water tester later, Jill wanted to go straight back upstairs and strangle Wesker. What Einstein had had the bright idea of using soundwaves as an interface for this thing?

Whatever, she'd gotten the damn thing to analyze the water sample, and it had disabled part of the lock down. Now she just had to make her way past all the brain suckers and other monsters in order to get back to the elevator.

When she made it back up, Wesker was nowhere in sight and the shuttered door was open. Well, she wasn’t waiting up for him. She followed through into the next room. A door stood in the wall opposite her, a red light shining from the panel beside it. “Insert system disk to unlock,” the panel read. To her right was the maintenance tunnel, a sharp series of corners and turns bathed in more red from the emergency lights.

A bullet ricocheted off the wall inches from her hip. She jerked backward, taking cover around a corner. Her first thought was Wesker, turning on her at last, but that made no sense. If he wanted her dead, he'd have thrown her off the bridge earlier. They'd done nothing so far that he couldn't do himself. He wouldn't want to kill her yet.

"You're still wandering around," came a familiar voice. Male, with a heavy russian accent and a bit of gravel. Two more bullets fired, and both missed their mark.

"Nikolai?" Jill hissed. She should have known that rat would be scurrying around here, in one of Umbrella's facilities. And where the hell was Wesker? "Trying to get out all by yourself, huh? That's your plan?"

"I made certain none of the other supervisors survived. Once I get out of here, I will be the only one left who knows what really happened. It will give me more bargaining power when it comes to discussing my bonus."

Jesus, Wesker hadn't been kidding about that 'incentive'. Nikolai's plan sounded like a great way to get yourself discreetly shot by another Umbrella agent before you could cash their check, but what did she know of the company. She'd only been screwed over by it twice now.

She tried to peek out, and had to jerk her head back as more bullets sailed her way.

"Why try to kill me, then? I'm not on their payroll."

"No, but they do want you dead. The amount is modest, but there is a reward for providing confirmation of your death."

"Oh, that's great. Except I have no intention of contributing to your retirement fund!"

Nikolai followed up her snappy remark with another shot. Jill wanted to roll her eyes at how much ammo the man was wasting. At this rate, all she had to do was stand still and taunt him until the Russian ran out of ammunition.

Suddenly, there was a sickening, squelching-popping sound, and Nikolai screamed. Jill dared to poke her head out. Nikolai had dropped his gun, and stood arched in agony, his own blood splattering the walls around him. There was a hand sticking out from his chest. As she watched, it coiled into a fist and then pulled backward. Nikolai crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from the hole through his ribs.

Wesker shook the blood from his hand, as casually as if it were only water or spaghetti sauce. Jill stood fast, completely dumbstruck. She had been expecting a mutant, a monster, maybe Nemesis itself. She hadn’t known it was even possible for an ordinary human to puncture another man’s torso with nothing but a bare hand. That was the kind of schlock reserved for over the top martial arts movies.

Nikolai wasn’t dead yet. He had one hand stuffed over the hole in him, futilely trying to stem the bleeding, and he weakly rolled himself over.

“You....!” he croaked. “Still...alive?”

“Still up to your old tricks, eh Nikolai? I’ll be sure to send Sergei the news of your unfortunate accident,” Wesker purred.

“No, comrade...” Nikolai’s hand moved from his chest to inside his jacket. “You...will join me in hell...”

Something in his pack started beeping.

Jill threw herself away from the mouth of the tunnel not a moment too soon. The explosion ripped apart the room, and even at her distance the force was great enough to send her flying off her feet. Debris bounced around her, shards of metal and wiring skittering across the floor. She was lucky. Nothing had lodged itself in her back before she hit the ground.

She took a quick inventory of herself before moving: no broken bones, no wet spots, just more bruises. Groaning, she pushed herself upright, shaking dust out of her hair. It figured that Nikolai would have one last, awful trick up his sleeve. Well, he’d failed to kill her for the last time. It was clear sailing from here on out.

Only then did she remember Wesker, who had been standing beside the epicenter of the explosion. The tunnel had been twisted into a mass of wreckage, and she dove right into it.

“Shit, shit, SHIT,” Jill chanted as she threw debris out of her way, clearing a path to the man lying limply in the corner. He had rebar sticking out of his stomach. That was--fine, that was fine, he’d had worse. “Come on, you motherfucker,” she hissed at him, falling to her knees and bracing her hands over his wounds. “Don’t you leave me too. We had a deal, goddammit.”

Wesker’s hand curled over her wrist, pulled it away. He was smiling.

“Are you actually worried about me, darling?” he rasped.

“Shut up. You helped make that thing, and you’re going to help me put it down.” She wrenched out of his grip and put her hands back on him, groping around his bloodied abdomen for the source of the bleeding. All she found was smooth skin.

He seized the rebar and pulled it out with a sick sucking sound, wincing and spitting up blood as the metal left him.

“You stupid--you’re going to bleed out,” she yelled, or started to yell, because just then he climbed to his feet and she had a front row seat as his abdomen healed over. “What. The hell?”

The rebar fell to the ground with a clatter.

“I told you. I’m not the only dead man walking around.” He tilted his head down, and slipped off his cracked sunglasses, boring into her with eyes no man could mistake as human.

His eyes had been gray, once, the muddy kind that could pass for blue or green depending on the lighting. Now they were burning orange, framed in red, with vertical slits for pupils.

“And, for your information, I had zero involvement with the Nemesis project.”

“Tell it to the jury,” Jill said. She swallowed. “So you’re one of the freaks now, too?”

“Some would say I’ve always been a bit of a freak,” he said, his voice lowering to a suggestive purr.

She fought down a flush. “Don’t remind me of that now.”

"In any case, it's as I thought," Wesker said, brushing dust off his shirt. He stepped past her. "Nikolai retreated here. That means he must have had an escape plan in place.”

“I haven’t had much luck with Umbrella helicopters tonight,” Jill told him, remembering how Nemesis had shot down the first one. Then again, Nemesis didn’t have his rocket launcher anymore. Maybe they’d have more luck this time.

“It’s better than trying to escape the blast zone on foot, wouldn’t you agree?”

She shuddered at the thought.

“Here’s the correct door. How lucky, Nikolai’s blast didn’t manage to reach it.”

He indicated the door she had passed, the one with the red indicator light. 'Please insert a system disk to unlock,' read the panel beside it.

“You weren’t bluffing about the disk?” Jill asked as she came to his side.

“Why would I?” Wesker asked. Jill had no retort for that. He pulled a disk from his inside suit pocket and fed it to the slot. With a whirr, a click, and a beep, the door unlocked. “Perfect. Now we just need to lure our friend in here for his shower.”

“Hang on. I want to make sure this equipment works first. The factory director’s diary was saying something about being too backed up with...” her lips curled reflexively on the words, “guinea pigs.”

“Hmm. I’m sure Umbrella was in over their heads, attempting to dispose of all the bodies caught in the early outbreak. Not a bad idea, Jill. I’d hate to find out the chemical supply has been depleted when we have the Nemesis already in the room with us.”

He opened the door. Jill flinched back as a wall of stench hit her square in the face, sour with acid and death.

“Oh, god,” she groaned, covering her mouth and nose with one hand. “How does anyone work here?”

“You’re definitely right,” Wesker said, his own nose wrinkled. “The systems were backed up.”

Inside the room, piles of half-melted bodies sat in piles. It was like looking at the inside of a dilapidated rendering plant, except that she had the unpleasant knowledge that all of this viscera had once been human.

Wesker entered first, with Jill trailing reluctantly behind him. He seemed less bothered by the smell than her. The bastard was probably accustomed to the stench of death, she thought. Chemicals, too. Who knew what he had seen in his years working in Umbrella laboratories.

The steel floor looked like something out of a space ship, with massive hinges along the sides and a zig-zag split down the center, marked off with black and yellow lines. It must have been designed to open so it could dump the room’s contents below. Two of the facing walls were lined with thick pipes, each with a nozzle and a lever. Those must have been the acid dispensers.

Wesker went to the control panel near the door and started hitting buttons.

“What are you doing?” Jill asked, ever suspicious. She kept near to the door, just in case he tried anything funny. Just knowing that the floor could open put her on edge. She really didn’t want to walk any further into this room.

“I am checking to see that the chemical supply is intact.” He hit a few more buttons, than nodded to himself. “Good, the bath is nearly full and the supply lines are well fed. It will need refreshing soon, but it should be enough to take care of our persistent friend.”

“So, everything’s working? We can go hunt down that freak?”

“Not yet. The chemicals are here, now I want to make sure that the delivery system is still functional.” He gestured to the pipes.

“Nothing ever seems to work during an outbreak,” Jill grumbled to herself. She watched as Wesker went to the nearest pipe and pulled the lever down, his body angled well away from the nozzle. A spray of yellow liquid vomited out from the nozzle, showering the floor in front of it for thirty seconds before shutting off. A human arm that had been lying within the path of the spray sizzled and melted under the corrosive chemicals. God, she did not even want to know what was in this shit.

Wesker moved on to the next pipe, while Jill turned to the ones on the opposite side of the room.

She scrutinized him out of the corner of her eye as she inspected the pipes. He still moved like a human. To think, she'd gone and made a fool of herself, had panicked and worried over him, for nothing. He was never going to let her live that down. Wasn't that the theme of the night, making a fool of herself? As if the revelation that he had probably listened to all her drunk phone calls wasn't bad enough.

But what if he hadn't? What if he was just being his usual smug, mysterious self, and she was reading too much into it? Dammit. She wished she had some way of knowing for sure whether he'd listened to them or not. Had he referenced anything she'd said? She scoured her memories of their few encounters. He'd known about Nikolai before she'd mentioned him, but that was about it. Had she made any calls while she was delirious from the T-virus? Were there even any more working phones in Raccoon? Someone had cut the landline service off after the first day. Her money was on either Umbrella or the government.

Wesker caught one of her furtive glances. “Something on your mind, darling?” he asked her.

“Just wondering,” she said gruffly. “How have you been living, when everyone thinks you're dead?”

“Quite well,” he said. “It’s easy if you’re prepared for it.”

“You must have lost your apartment. All your nice clothes. Your bank account.”

Wesker chuckled. “Did you really think I put all my money in one place, under my own name? Don’t be naive, dear.”

“Your backup sunglasses collection, your phone, your contacts...”

“Oh, I kept the cell phone. It was surprisingly easy to keep up, for a dead man,” Wesker said. Jill felt a chill over her skin, as if someone had just walked over her grave. Wesker’s tone was much too light, too careless. He knew. “You know, I wasn’t going to at first. It seemed a silly expense to keep paying for service to a phone line I couldn’t use. But, a certain someone has been feeding me a lot of interesting information on that number, without my having to lift a finger.”

Goddamn did she want to punch him. The bastard was very lucky he was on the other side of the room, out of range of Jill’s fists or an acid spray.

“Okay, okay, so you got the messages. You don’t have to be coy about it.”

“I was only following suit, darling. You don’t need to be embarrassed. Your updates have been extremely informative.”

“Wesker...” Jill growled. “You weren’t meant to hear those.”

“No? They were left on my voicemail. What else was I supposed to do with them?”

She had no response to him, and angrily turned to the next pipe in line.

“It’s almost sad, how close you came to uncovering everything. If Chris hadn’t put Umbrella on guard with his reckless stunts early on, I think you really could have gotten somewhere.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I am not,” Wesker said seriously. “I wish you had managed it. It would have saved me a lot of work.”

Jill huffed, not saying anything.

“By the by. It may interest you to know that Brian Irons is dead.”

Jill paused. “He is, huh. Serves that scumbag right. Was I right? Was he on Umbrella’s payroll?”

“Worse than that. He worked for Umbrella so that they wouldn’t release his nasty secrets to the public.”

“What secrets?”

“Let’s just say there are a lot of cold cases in the RPD file room that are attributable to the chief.”

Jill’s fists clenched. At every turn that fat bastard had deliberately silenced and humiliated the surviving S.T.A.R.S. Chris hadn’t been able to take it like the rest of them, and that was what had led to his suspension. She would never forget the sneer on Brian Iron’s face as he delivered that sentence. Chris had all but thrown his gun at the man's smug face and stormed off. Jill had been so tempted to follow suit, and only her sense of duty had stayed her hand. She had suspected ever since that first debriefing that Umbrella was lining the chief’s pockets.

“What got him? Zombies?”

“Actually, I understand he was the victim of G.”

G-virus, again. She wondered what it did, and why everyone wanted it.

“Is it a bad way to go?”

“Extremely.”

“Good.”

There was a rumble from the corner of the room. Jill paused with her hands on the final pipeline, searching the dark corner for any signs of something amiss. Suddenly, a warning klaxon sounded, and red light bathed the room.

“Warning. Beginning the operation inside the treatment room. All personnel evacuate.”

“What?” Wesker ran to the console near the door and punched buttons frantically. “Who triggered the system?”

“What’s it doing?” Jill demanded, joining him at the door. “Tell me that warning doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

“That it’s about to dump us into the chemical bath? Yes. The timer is set for 4 minutes.” Wesker’s brow furrowed. “Nikolai is dead. There can’t be anyone left alive here who would trigger...” he trailed off, frowning at something on the screen. “Unless the system detected an active bioweapon inside the room and initiated its automatic lock down and treatment procedure.”

“An active...?” she looked up into his red eyes. “You?”

“But why did it wait until now to trigger?”

In a dark corner of the chamber behind them, a pile of corpses stirred.

“S.T.A.R.S.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else who's played Resident Evil 3 before, say it with me now: "fuuuuuuck the water sample puzzle!"


	6. The Treatment Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for a boss fight!

The two turned in time to see one pile of corpses shudder and heave, body parts and bent gas tanks sliding down the mass of rubble. The hulking figure of Nemesis burst out from the pile, tentacles whipping out from its back.

“Oh for god’s sake, how did he get in here?” Jill said.

“Dammit. The plan was to lock him in here while we stayed safely outside.”

“Well the plan’s out the window then, isn’t it. You got any backup plans?”

Wesker drew his samurai edge. “Incapacitate him so the system disables its lock down, then get the hell out before we get dumped in acid.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Nemesis charged them. Jill threw herself out of the way and hit the ground in a roll, mashing her shoulder into something slimy in the process. She fought down a shudder and pivoted, kicking a rotten leg out of her way. Nemesis had barreled past her and skidded to a stop right before hitting the wall. Wesker stood on the creature's other side, his pistol trained on its bald head.

Nemesis turned its head, its one milky eye glaring over its shoulder at them. Jill wasn't sure if it could even see anything with that eye, it was so clouded over. Jill opened fire, and Wesker followed suit. Nemesis shrugged the bullets off with a snarl, shaking its head and stomping away from the wall. It seemed to hesitate then, with both of its targets standing an equal distance from it, each equally threatening.

It came for Jill first, because it was just that kind of day. Jill grit her teeth and lowered her gun. She had already wasted a hell of a lot of bullets on this thing, and her supplies were running low. If surviving through Raccoon had taught her anything, it was the importance of making resourceful use of her surroundings.

She couldn’t ask for a better resource than a goddamn BOW disposal room. She took off at a run towards the nearest acid shower, keeping her eye on Nemesis but not wasting lead on him. The levers on the pipes were made of metal, and turned to the side. They weren't the hardest things to turn in the world, but they had decent resistance. It gave her an idea.

“Come on, Ugly, come get me!” she barked over her shoulder.

“S.T.A.R.S.!”

“Duck!” Wesker called.

She obeyed, narrowly missing the swing of a tentacle. Shit, it had more range than she thought. She turned around so she could keep an eye on it while she kept backing up towards the pipelines. The debris and body parts scattered around the floor made footing treacherous. Nemesis followed her at a steely walking pace, ignoring Wesker. Over the noise of the alarm and the Nemesis growling, she could just hear Wesker barking something rude about the giant dead frogs everywhere.

There was the first pipe. She planted herself a safe five feet behind it and waited, her gun aimed at the pipe. The moment Nemesis passed in front of the dispenser, she squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet straight into the lever. The mechanism gurgled to life, and acid sprayed out from the nozzle.

Too late. She hadn’t timed it right. The delay between the lever turning and the acid spraying was longer than she thought, and Nemesis was out of its range before the chemicals came out.

“Fuck.” Jill turned and ran, jumping over the bisected corpse of a giant mutant frog.

“Not a bad idea,” Wesker said. “But there’s a delay of about 5 seconds.”

“I noticed!” Jill snapped.

In her hurry to be clever, she'd trapped herself. She backed up now with a wall of metal to her right, a wall of corpses to her left, and one big, angry, ugly fucker bearing down on her from the front. She could see Wesker behind it, standing beside the first pipe, still patiently plugging bullets into the monster's back.

Jill fired at the third pipe in line, but she didn't wait around to see if the spray would hit Nemesis in time. She scrambled up the enormous pile of corpses beside her, cringing at the slimy materials under her fingers, the rotten flesh slipping beneath her boots. This was so gross.

She braced herself for a claw to slice into her back at any moment, but instead, she heard Nemesis roar and stomp away from her. Nemesis charged Wesker, catching the man off-guard with a swipe of one meaty claw that sent him flying into a wall. Jill winced at the crack of the impact. If Wesker were lucky, his skull and shoulder would be the _only_ things that broke after that hit. Well, if he had survived an explosion, he could deal with a shattered skull—if Nemesis didn't finish him off first.

Which it seemed intent on doing. Jill watched from the top of the pile as the mutant rapidly closed the distance between itself and the limp figure crumpled on the floor. It didn't matter to her if Wesker died. Really. She'd been fighting through most of this nightmare all by herself, and she could finish it alone, too.

The explosion earlier had caught her off guard, that was all. In her panic at seeing Wesker hurt, she'd forgotten about everything he'd done. Maybe Wesker hadn't been the one to decide S.T.A.R.S. needed to die. Maybe he was telling the truth for once, that he had been only a hand operating on someone else's behalf. That didn't change the fact that he had been part of the team that created the damn virus in the first place. All this death could be traced back to his work. If Nemesis crushed Wesker's skull in, it would do her a favor.

And yet. She couldn't decide if she was frustrated or relieved when Wesker recovered his wits just in time to fire at the last pipe between Nemesis and himself. The lever turned, the pipe burgled, and a stream of acid spewed from the nozzle right in front of Nemesis’s face. The creature stopped, apparently intelligent enough not to walk into the spray but too stupid to work out how to get around it.

“More like 3 second delay,” Jill said. She slid down the other side of the pile to the floor. “Goddamn Umbrella. The timing on these things sucks ass.”

“They weren’t meant for this,” Wesker groaned, struggling to his feet using the wall. He clutched his head briefly, grimacing. There was a splash of dark red leaking down the back of his head, dying the pale hair crimson.

Nemesis had worked out that it ought to walk around the acid, just as the spray started to lose muster and wilt. Wesker staggered away from it, narrowly ducking a flailing tentacle as he went. Even with what looked like a minor concussion, he was too fast for Nemesis. He made his way across the room, to the other line of pipes. Jill tracked him with half an eye, most of her attention focused on the monster. Nemesis could be unpredictable in its movements. She wouldn't fare as well if Nemesis suddenly turned around and slammed _her_ into a wall.

Once they were at the other side of the room, Wesker shot at one of the levers, and the pipe in front of Nemesis began to gurgle. Heedless, the monster kept walking forward. This could be it. The timing looked right. Jill gripped her gun tight, internally chanting for the spray to hit Nemesis right in the face.

At the last possible second, Nemesis pivoted on its heel and sprinted to her, arm pulling back for a swing. She rolled under the strike just in time to avoid having her head punched off her shoulders. Behind her, the acid splattered over the floor, useless.

Wesker cursed, audibly seething with frustration.

“This isn’t working,” Jill said.

“If you have any other bright ideas, I’d be happy to hear them.”

“How long do we have before we get dumped into the chemical bath?”

“Less than three minutes.”

Not enough time to wear Nemesis down with handgun bullets, and she was out of everything else.

“I hate to say it,” Jill admitted, “But I think we’re going to have to work together.”

“Wasn’t that the idea in the first place?”

“I mean actually work together.” She risked a glance Wesker’s way, catching his eyes. “If he doesn’t want to take a shower, then he’s going to need a little push.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Wesker said. “I’ll take the shot, you push.”

“What? You’re the one with the freaky abilities,” she said.

“You’ve already demonstrated that you’re quite good at pushing this brute around,” Wesker replied with a grin. “besides, I’m already in position.” He gestured to the wall of pipes beside him.

She couldn’t deny either of those things. It had been in the heat of the moment, but she had managed to push Nemesis off a bridge. She wasn’t looking forward to having to touch the thing again. Then again, could it really be worse than any of the other things she'd had to touch in here?

“Fine, whatever. We don’t have time to argue.”

Nemesis stood still, looking between the two as if it couldn’t decide who to go after first.

“Over here,” Wesker called, and shot the beast in the face.

Nemesis growled, took several steps in his direction, and stopped again.

“Don’t get shy on me now,” Wesker scolded it. “The hourglass is running low.”

“S.T.A.R.S....”

Finally, it stalked towards the ex-captain. Wesker held his ground, firing the occasional shot into the monster’s center of mass to keep its attention. Jill crept up behind Nemesis, timing her footsteps with the gunshots so she wouldn’t be heard. It was gut-wrenching, coming so close on purpose. If it realized she was there, if it turned on her, she might not have time to react.

Just like the other side of the room, there were mounds of bodies near the wall, creating a small barrier. Nemesis reached the wall and started down the corridor of clear floor space, directly in the path of the nozzles. The bead of Wesker’s weapon shifted, and he fired at the second pipe in the row.

The nozzle guzzled to life, spraying acid in front of Nemesis, who stopped. Jill was ready. She launched herself at its back and shoved, catching it in the lower back, below the mass of deadly tentacles. Nemesis was nearly three times her size and weight, but it was leaning forward as it always did when it walked. Between that and the element of surprise, it was just enough to make it stumble forward into the spray.

Nemesis screamed, thrashing with its every limb. Jill ran, just in case it wasn’t enough, just in case it came back after her. She didn't pause until she had managed to put a pile of corpses between herself and it. From there, all she could see were its tentacles thrashing through the air on the other side of the pile, banging the walls hard enough to ding the metal, thumping against the pile and sending body parts flying.

Wesker had wedged himself in the corner between the wall with the pipes and the wall of dead bodies, which was a bad place to be with Nemesis rampaging a few feet away. He jumped to the top of a debris pile, stumbling a little on the slick footing.

“Is it--” Jill started to ask.

One spear-tipped tentacle ripped through Wesker’s shoulder from behind, cutting through muscle and bone as easy as needle through cloth. He yelped in pain, losing his footing and dangling off the tentacle like a hooked fish. The tentacle whipped backward, flinging Wesker into the wall again before both of them fell down out of sight. Jill stared at the spot Wesker had been standing, nonplussed.

A series of three gunshots cracked the air, and then all of it, the screaming and the acid-hiss and the whipping of tentacles through the air, faded to silence.

“Is it dead?” Jill asked, tentative.

“Yes,” Wesker ground out. “For now.” His voice was wet, gasping. The tentacle must have punctured a lung.

He'll be fine, she told herself. She wouldn't care if he wasn't, she told herself. She had just watched him bounce back from worse. He wouldn't care if the same thing happened to her. She was and always had been a pawn to him. He deserved it.

He'd just saved her life.

She carefully rounded the pile, at a pace between running and sauntering. There Wesker lay curled at the base of the wall, and there beside him, what was left of Nemesis. She wrinkled her nose at the creature draped across the ground. Its whole head was gone, and most of the skin from its upper body was dripping off. Wesker was sitting up, grimacing as he tried to work the tentacle out of his shoulder.

She planted her hand on her hip.

“What is it with you and getting impaled?”

“It is not a trend I want to encourage,” Wesker replied, blood spilling out of his mouth. One good shove sent the tip of the tentacle back through his chest, out the other side. She still didn’t understand how they worked. The flesh looked supple, yet somehow they had enough piercing power to break through bone.

The tentacle lay limply where he tossed it down, with not so much as a twitch from its owner. She couldn't quite believe it was dead. That had seemed too easy, too unsatisfying. Maybe she would have felt differently if she were the one who had gotten stabbed.

The computer voiced another warning, telling them they had a minute left to evacuate the room.

"We need to move," Wesker groaned. He slammed a palm into the wall, and levered himself up. Her eyes lingered on his dripping shoulder wound a moment before she made herself turn away.

"You think he'll get back up?"

"He might."

She scowled over her shoulder. "You're serious?"

"We'll want the chemical bath to be sure. Even then, it might not finish the job. It's all a question of speed. Can the virus heal and grow tissue faster than the chemicals can degrade it? I was not on the Nemesis project, so I don’t know what its rate of regeneration is. If it heals fast enough, then yes, there is a chance it may survive.” Wesker examined the console by the door, pressed a few buttons. “It seems full lock down has been deactivated.”

Jill pounded on the door, which resolutely stayed shut. “Then why is this thing still locked?”

“It needs an Umbrella keycard to open.”

“What? Why?” It struck her as beyond stupid to have any doors stay locked when personnel may need to evacuate. The computer was still repeating that very order, tonelessly counting down to the moment the floor would drop open.

Wesker leveled her with a look. “You know why.”

Because only Umbrella personnel would be allowed to escape, she realized. She felt sick, unable to escape the sudden imagining of some trespassing teen locked in here, pounding on this very door and screaming in panic as the timer counted relentlessly down.

Fucking Umbrella.

Wesker had been rummaging around in his pockets, and now produced a shiny red keycard. “I suppose now is when we find out whether or not my ID is still active.”

“I hope Umbrella doesn’t shut down accounts any faster than your phone company,” Jill replied.

He ran the card through the reader, which chirped amicably and turned the indicator light from red to green. The door opened. They wasted no time piling out of that death trap.

Jill leaned against the wall in the corridor outside, catching her breath and taking stock of her bones. Nothing broken or bleeding, as far as she could feel, though it would take a lot of showers before she could start to feel clean again. The stench would probably haunt her for weeks.

A whirring of machinery came from behind the wall. She could imagine the treatment room’s floor dropping open, dumping all those corpses into the bubbling vat of Umbrella’s special chemical cocktail below. Nemesis would be with them. If she never had to see that malformed face again, it would be too soon.

"I see you haven't grown rusty. Just as sharp as the day I left you," Wesker said.

"Should you really be talking with a hole in your lung?" she snapped, not looking at him. She'd never been good at taking praise, but especially not from men who betrayed her.

Wesker's lip twitched. "Still such concern."

"I'd be happy to add a few more holes if that didn't do the trick," she warned him.

He ignored this. Wesker took a deep breath, his head tilted back, eyes closed behind their shades. "The lung is fine. Just has a little fluid buildup."

"I didn't ask," Jill told him coldly. "Nemesis is dead. Just like we agreed."

"And good riddance to that nuisance." Wesker turned his head to her, his expression hard to read. "Nikolai is dead as well. You should thank me."

Nikolai dead, all the supervisors dead, no one left to sell Wesker out to. They had both shaken off their hounds, and stood alone with no obstacles between them and survival other than distance. And each other.

Jill's eyes narrowed. Her hand inched towards her gun, slow, careful.

Then the emergency lights bathed the corridor in red, and the scream of a warning klaxon broke the moment.

"Warning: Nuclear launch detected. All personnel evacuate immediately," said a computerized voice.

Jill's eyes went to the ceiling, her mouth agape, as if she might see through the metal to the missile rocketing their way. They were running out of time. Goddamit. She didn’t know why the hell the facility had the capability to detect missiles--just another weird symptom of Umbrella’s paranoia, she supposed--but she was sure as hell going to heed its warning.

Wesker took full advantage of her distraction to close in. His warm fingers touched her shoulder, stole her attention from the siren. His other hand caught her chin, and his lips pressed to hers.

She had kissed him before, so many times, in so many secret meetings. It had been illegal, it had been wrong, dallying with a superior. She hadn't cared at the time, and neither had he. It had become an open joke at S.T.A.R.S., the two of them flirting in front of the team. No one had really believed they were dating.

Had he known, the moment he first kissed her, that the STARS were to be sacrificial lambs?

She thrust the barrel of her gun under his chin and cocked it. He huffed a laugh against her mouth. Even with that persuasive piece of metal pressed into his skin, he was slow in releasing her mouth.

She let her glare do the talking. They were over, and had been ever since he tried to kill her. Murder attempts really put a damper on any relationship, even one as twisted as theirs.

"Tell me," he said, apparently not bothered by the weapon digging into the underside of his jaw. "What are you planning to do once you escape Raccoon?"

'Once', not 'if.' At least he had some confidence in her.

"Why don't you tell me why you were here in the first place?" she countered. "You sure as hell didn't come for the reunion." You didn't come for me, she didn't say.

"I had a few loose ends to tie up. Sadly, I arrived a little too late. But that hardly matters now. There's no reason why we can't go our separate ways peacefully, Jill."

"Oh, yeah? Because I can think of a lot of reasons why I should fill your face full of lead. Seven, at least. One for every good man who died in that godforsaken mansion."

Wesker held up his hands, fingers spread, a smirk tugging at his mouth. Daring her to pull the trigger.

"Still sore, I see. I'm sorry, Jill. I just don't have the time to entertain your grudge tonight. Perhaps another time?"

Before she could fire, before she could even register that he had moved, Wesker vanished. She had never seen a human move that fast. Of course, he wasn’t human anymore, was he?

Jill let her arm fall to her side, gun still in hand, her knuckles white around the grip.

"One day," she growled to the empty hallway, "Someone is going to make you stand still and face the consequences of your own actions."

But that day wouldn't be today, and that person wouldn't be her. He was right, as much as she hated to admit it. She didn't have time to hunt him down. She needed to get out before the missile hit and she got blown to ash. Wesker had mentioned earlier than Nikolai must have come here because he knew of a way to escape. Maybe there was another Umbrella chopper stashed away nearby, waiting for the taking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silly Wesker, don't go in for the smooch when both of you smell like death warmed over.


	7. Paraclesus' Sword

The emergency lights painted her path red as she ran along the cold, industrial steel corridors, hunting for any place she hadn’t already been. The locked shutter near the entrance had opened at some point. She followed the newly unlocked hall out into the control room of a radio tower, its walls covered in windows and banked by consoles. The equipment all seemed to be in working order. She could call for help, if she had anyone to call, if anyone cared about this desolate city and its few survivors.

As she stood there, punching buttons and flicking dials, a distant sound muscled its way over the blare of the alarms. Louder and closer it came, until she could not fail to recognize it: the whirling of helicopter blades.

The chopper rose into the view of the windows and held there, hovering outside. For a moment, Jill allowed herself to hope—until she spotted the flash of blond hair on the chopper's pilot.

Wesker. Damn everything.

Static erupted from the speaker, indicating an incoming transmission.

“A little slow, are we?” Wesker asked.

“Goddammit Wesker!” She growled into the mic.

“There is room for one more, Jill,” he said.

The words made her seize up inside, clenched around her gut like cold iron fingers. His tone had been neutral, even a little warm, but the offer had a mocking edge nevertheless. What she wouldn't give for a rocket launcher right now so she could blow that jerk out of the sky.

“What about Carlos?” she asked.

“He’ll have to find his own way out. I’m afraid I don’t have any use for him. You, however, have just demonstrated once again how impressive your own skills are. You’ll be needing a new job once this is all over. I would be happy to take you under my wing again.” He paused. “We could take on Umbrella together.”

She started laughing, bitter and cold, a sound so dark and angry she was almost surprised it could come from her own throat. Now he wanted to team up against Umbrella, huh? He should have made that offer before he sacrificed his own men for the company’s sake, before he’d betrayed and abandoned her.

“I am never. EVER. Working for you again,” she hissed.

“Have it your way, then.”

The helicopter pulled away, and flew off into the brightening sky. She didn’t know if she had made the right decision, or the smart one. But, it was one that she could live with, even if she was only going to live for five more minutes.

The chopper was a speck on the horizon when the door behind her creaked opened, and footsteps approached her.

“Jill!” Carlos said. His grin dropped the moment he saw the look on her face. “What happened?”

“The escape helicopter is gone.” She hesitated. “Someone beat us to it.”

“Aw, dammit! I’ll bet it was that creep Nikolai.”

Jill said nothing. It wasn’t that she had any reason to protect Wesker from Carlos. Mentioning his name would just lead to a lot of questions, and a history she didn’t want to spend her last moments reliving. Let Carlos think it was Nikolai. It was easier that way.

Carlos joined her by the windows, looking out at the first fingers of dawn rising over the horizon.

“I guess this is it then.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “But I don’t want to die in a place like this.”

Jill didn’t, either. It felt too much like Umbrella winning. It wouldn’t matter that she’d busted up another of their sick toys if the missile blast killed her in the end. Yet, it seemed they were out of options. Wesker had been right, they’d never make it out on foot.

Carlos ran past her, clipping her shoulder in his haste to reach the radio.

“What are you doing?” Jill asked.

“I’m not giving up. There has to be a way. As long as we’re alive, we still have a chance!”

That was one way of looking at things. She didn’t have the heart to point out that any help he might call wouldn’t be able to reach them in time. Instead, she looked to the hatch in the middle of the room, and the ladder leading down. According to Wesker’s map, it would lead out of the factory.

“I’ll go ahead,” she said. “Whatever happens, I’m not going to sit quietly and wait to die.”

Carlos nodded. She left him fiddling with the equipment, and put her foot on the first rung of the ladder. Before she could shift her weight over, the radio crackled to life.

“This is....” the message cut out into static. “...over. I’ve....” more static. “to retr......Jill. ....can see there’s no time left...This is the S.T.A.R.S.......come in, Jill. Come in....”

She pulled herself away from the ladder so fast that the tip of her shoe caught on the bars, and she nearly slammed face-first into the floor. Carlos backed away so she could get to the equipment.

“This is Jill. You’re breaking up, we can barely hear you. There’s two of us in the abandoned factory on the edge of town. We need pickup, over.”

“....factory. Got it....’m coming, Jill. Over.”

The voice was so garbled with static she couldn’t identify it. It couldn’t have been Wesker. He wouldn’t have come back for her, and his own radio call had been much clearer in quality. She had no idea who else would be here, looking for her.

“Come on, we have to get out of here so he can pick us up!” Carlos said.

“You’re right. Let’s go.”

Back she went to the ladder, and this time her limbs were nimble with both desperation and hope. They were serenaded the whole way down by the repetitive drone of the computer.

“Warning: missile attack confirmed. Emergency level: D. All personnel, evacuate.”

“Level D?” she muttered to herself, hopping the last two rungs to reach solid ground. “What emergencies do they have that’s worse than a missile attack?”

“I don’t think I want to know,” Carlos said. He looked around, taking in the hallway before them. “Looks like there’s only one way to go.”

“I think this is an emergency exit,” Jill said.

It wasn’t pretty down here. Flaming heaps of rubble, blood stains, and corpses littered the ground, and there were holes in the flooring. A furrow creased her brow as Jill looked over the corpses. There was something odd about them. Alongside the ordinary dead humans lay giants, each seven feet tall at the shortest. Their skin was ghoulishly pale, their skulls were bald, and each one was dressed in the same green trench coat. The Umbrella logo glittered on the pockets of their coats.

“I don’t think these were human,” Jill said, frowning at one body that was half-embedded in the wall. A glint of silver caught her eye. One of the dead humans was holding a grenade launcher. She snatched it up and was delighted to find it was loaded with a full compliment of shells. If they were lucky, she wouldn't need such heavy weaponry, but she took it with her anyway.

“It looks like we missed a hell of a fight,” Carlos said. He pointed out a corpse at his feet that was wearing US army gear. The body was holding a packet of papers.

With the timer counting down on them and a mysterious benefactor waiting to lift them out of hell, it really wasn’t the time for her police instincts to flare up. Yet Jill couldn’t resist snatching up the papers and skimming through them as she walked. It was a set of operating instructions for something called “Paraclesus’ Sword.”

“The military was here,” she said, baffled and awed. “And they brought a rail canon.”

“Wow. Well where the hell were they in the rest of the city? I didn’t see them.”

Jill reached the end of the file, and her teeth clenched.

“They weren’t here to help Raccoon. They came to steal Umbrella’s secrets, and they knew Umbrella was going to fight back. These other things must be Umbrella’s guard dogs.”

They passed through a door into a large warehouse. There was the rail canon, a massive machine about as tall as a semi-truck and half as long as one. It had been used a lot, if the devastation to the room was any indication. More dead Umbrella freaks lay in holes punched into the walls, their trench coats reduced to ash.

“Tyrants,” Jill hissed, recognizing the exposed hearts and boney claws.

“What?”

“It’s a special type of Umbrella monster. They’re almost as hard to kill as the Nemesis. No wonder the military brought in the big guns.”

They made their way through the maze of giant packing crates to the behemoth of a weapon that lay sleeping at the far end. Jill looked it over with a critical eye, noting there was no visible damage to it. Maybe it could still work.

“Now that’s the kind of firepower I’m talking about,” Carlos said. “Think I could fit it in my inventory?”

Jill shook her head. “You’re going to need a bigger pouch.”

They went to the door, the very last door, according to the map. It wouldn’t open.

“Oh, what the hell.” She banged it with her fist. “Not now!”

“The panel here says something about lock down,” Carlos offered.

Jill growled some very unflattering things about Umbrella. “That does it,” she growled. “If we can’t unlock it, then we’re blasting our way out.”

She ran back to the rail canon’s control panel and started hitting buttons, referring back to the manual she had picked up.

“Uhhh, Jill? You don’t think that’s a little excessive?” Carlos asked nervously, backing away from the locked door.

“It’s here, and it’ll work. I’m using it,” Jill told him. “Besides, that door is metal. You’re not going to be able to kick it down.”

“Well no, but...”

“Checking. System.” More computer voices, this one male, more stilted than Umbrella’s system. She heard a motor whirr to life, followed by some clicks and beeps. The lights on the canon turned on. “Checking. Battery. Warning, there is not enough power to. Activate. The system.”

“Seriously?” Carlos asked.

“Nothing works during an outbreak,” Jill said. She looked around. “I think those are battery packs,” she said, pointing to a massive metal object sticking out from some kind of equally massive socket. “Let’s try pushing them in.”

“So I don’t want to ruin your moment, but. If you hadn’t noticed, this thing isn’t pointing at the door. And I don’t think this platform rotates.”

“That’s fine. We’ll just punch through the wall,” Jill told him. Carlos took one look at her face and did not object further.

The battery was every bit as heavy as it looked, even with Carlos helping her push. It ground into place with a click, and the indicator light turned green.

“Battery. Connected.”

“Alright. One down. There should be two more somewhere around here.”

“I think I saw one by the entrance,” Carlos said.

“You take that one. I’ll go look for the third one.”

Something about that locked door bothered her, though, as she scoured the room for another of the giant batteries. The whole factory had been put under biohazard lock down because of the outbreak, and then she and Wesker had disabled that by tricking the sensors. So why was this door still locked? Before, they’d had another door lock on them only because an “active B.O.W.” was nearby...

The thought had barely materialized in her head before she heard a crash behind her.

“Shit!” Carlos yelped.

Jill ran around the cargo container, towards his voice. Something had just dropped down from a hole in the ceiling, landing in the corner right next to one of the dead tyrants. Her first thought was that one of the worms from Raccoon park had followed her all the way here. But no, this sack of flesh had a few limbs. It reared up, balancing on one misshapen leg and two humanoid arms. Whole sections of its skin had eaten away, revealing cords of purple flesh and the white disks of its spine. A mouth gnawed its way out of a stump which might have been a neck at one point.

The creature huddled over the tyrant corpse and tore into it with its pointed teeth, stripping huge chunks of flesh off and swallowing them in gulps. Partially-congealed blood sprayed out over the walls and floor. The more it ate, the bigger it grew, muscles swelling, the purple cords lengthening out into another leg to replace the lost one.

She recognized it by the texture of its skin, and the extensive acid burns only confirmed her suspicion.

“Nemesis! I can’t believe this thing is still alive,” she said.

“Not if I can help it!” Carlos bellowed. A pepper of machine gun fire hammered the monster's side, splashing more blood on the floor. Nemesis didn’t seem very impressed. It reared back and roared, bony horns growing out of the new holes in its shoulder.

“Carlos, keep pushing that battery! I’ll handle this freak.”

It didn’t hiss “S.T.A.R.S.” as it came at her. She wasn’t sure if it even had a voice box anymore. It was like some other being inside of Nemesis was forcing a way out through its skin, filling up the holes burned by the chemical bath.

It didn’t try to move like a man anymore, either, leaping about on four legs like some kind of giant, malformed wolf. She held up her newly acquired grenade launcher and unloaded in its pointed face until it jumped up on top of one of the crates.

“Battery. Connected,” the computer said.

“Two down, one to go! Keep it busy, Jill!” Carlos called as he ran by her.

Nemesis growled, its head following the U.C.B.S. operative’s movement.

“No you don’t. Here! Over here!” She called, firing another grenade launcher at its trunk. She might not have been as great a marksman as Chris, but her scores weren’t shabby. You didn’t have to be William Tell to nail something with a grenade launcher.

In a reversal that some asshole somewhere would probably call poetic, Nemesis opened its mouth and spewed a stream of acid in her direction. She knew it was acid when she rolled out of the way, and the liquid melted the foot of a nearby Tyrant corpse.

“Jill, watch out!” Carlos yelled several seconds too late. “That stuff’ll melt right through you!”

“Thank, I noticed. Just keep pushing!”

She kept up a steady stream of fire on its face, not trying to kill it, just keeping it distracted. If rockets and acid and fire hadn't killed this monster, she didn't have much hope for any conventional weaponry. They needed that rail canon.

The frustrated monstrosity roared again and jumped at her. Nemesis moved a whole lot faster on four legs, and keeping ahead of it took her full concentration. She twisted on her heel and ran, sprinting down the corridor between crates to put some distance between them.

“Battery. Connected. Rail canon has been. Activated. Activating quick charge program. Preparing to. Fire."

The damn computer voice took forever to deliver its message, while the massive weapon beside it charged with a loud, growing whine. Bolts of electricity crackled along the weapon's exterior, scattering blue light over the surroundings. Jill glanced over her shoulder, noting the layout of the room behind her. She and Nemesis were near the wall, the canon on her right. She ran straight across, her hair standing on end as she had to cross the path of the charging canon. Nemesis stomped after her, its tentacles flailing in displeasure.

"5. 4. 3."

"Come on, come on," Jill hissed. "Get over here!"

Nemesis obeyed, but much faster than she wanted. It leaped at her, crossing the distance between them in under a second. Jill had to roll out of the way to avoid getting her head smashed into the wall.

"2. 1. Firing."

In a blinding flash of blue light, the canon fired, ripping a path of destruction through no less than four of the massive metal crates, a whole lot of piping, and some machinery that had been left in the middle of the room. The blast left a sizable crack in the wall at the very end.

It had missed Nemesis, and now the monster was standing right beside her. The grenade launcher was no good at close range; she'd kill herself with it. The Nemesis roared in her face, its tentacles rearing back for the kill. Carlos weighed in on the argument with a spray of machine gun fire into its eye.

"Over here, Jill!" he called. He had been behind one of the rows of tanks, and only had an opening now through the smoking hole that had been cut through them all.

Jill hurried through the twisted wreckage towards him. The rail canon was charging again. She could hear the whine of its machinery approaching another crescendo.

"Come on, ugly!" she called over her shoulder. Nemesis followed her into the newly cut corridor, its pointed maw opening wide. Jill recognized that movement and tackled Carlos out of the way right before another shower of acid spit from the thing's mouth. She wondered if it hadn't somehow absorbed that shit from the chemical bath, incorporating it into its own body as a weapon. Who knew what Umbrella's freaks were capable of.

She came back out from cover, lining herself up with the glowing tip of the rail canon. Here she held her ground, pounding Nemesis' gaping maw with grenade round after grenade round.

"5. 4."

"Jill, what are you doing? Get out of the way!"

"He's not dodging it again," she hissed back through grit teeth, keeping up a steady fire until the very last possible second.

"3. 2. 1."

She jumped out of the way. The second blast was just as deafening and blinding as the first.

“Oh, no...” Carlos moaned beside her. “But that one had to have hit!”

Jill dared to stand up and look.

Nemesis was pushing itself up from the ground, a good chunk of flesh missing from its trunk and shoulder. Yet even as they watched, the flesh grew back, even more twisted and misshapen than it had been before. Spines of bone burst out from its back, like its rib cage had cracked in half and been turned outward.

No matter what they did to it, it just kept growing bigger and uglier. What was it that Wesker had said? Something about outpacing its regeneration?

"I'm not giving up," she told Carlos. "We just need to land a better shot."

The head, she thought. Somehow, they had to hit the head.

A tentacle came screaming at her face, hit her in the jaw and tossed her off her feet. She hit the nearby wall hard enough to shake stars into her eyes. Carlos called her name, but the cry cut off in a yelp. Jill forced herself away from the wall, gritting her teeth when the motion made the whole room spin. Carlos—where was Carlos?

Movement out of the corner of her eye—there he was, dangling seven feet up in the air from a tentacle that had wrapped around his waist. Nemesis was shaking him around like a toddler with a ragdoll. One of the swings knocked the soldier into some wreckage with an ominous crack, and Carlos screamed.

She remembered what Nemesis had done to Wesker and felt a cold chill slither down her spine. She couldn't let it toss him. In the background, the rail canon whirred towards its third strike. Nemesis was still standing in front of the canon, but now so was Carlos.

Jill switched to her pistol and took careful aim, firing shot after shot at the tentacle holding her last partner. The flesh broke under her shots, and Carlos fell to the ground. He hit hard and lay dazed, clutching at his leg.

He wasn't safe yet. Nemesis stood over him, not more than a foot behind him. Its beady eyes were fixed on Jill.

"5. 4," the computer said.

"Shiiiiiit." Jill bolted forward, firing into Nemesis' face as she approached. It shook the shots off, snarling. She kept firing until she was close enough to sweep low and haul Carlos on to her shoulder. He groaned, weakly climbing to his feet with her help.

"My leg--"

"3."

"Walk it off, soldier!"

A tentacle slammed into a broken pipe right behind Jill's head. She grit her teeth and fired blindly behind her. Carlos could barely put weight on his leg--the knee was bending wrong, and the whole side of his leg was covered in blood. They limp-ran through the wrecked containers, towards the bubble of safety in the corner of the room beside the canon.

"2. 1."

She threw herself and Carlos the last few feet, hitting the ground a moment before the canon fired.

The payload hit Nemesis with an awful noise, and Nemesis let out one final scream before its entire upper half blasted into shreds. The remains of its body flipped several times through the air, set on fire by the impact, before falling to the ground with a splat. Jill gasped for breath, watching the hunk of flesh that used to be her tormentor, waiting for it to get up and grow even bigger.

“Alright, take that!” Carlos crowed hoarsely, then immediately crumpled and grabbed his leg. “Oww, fuck. Just. Just need one more shot for the wall.”

“Warning. System, overheating. Initiating cool down mode.”

“Are you joking me?” Carlos asked.

Jill sighed. The room filled with the beeping and clicking of the system ejecting its battery packs, undoing all their hard work, and a hiss emitted from the canon itself. But, there was one more beep that caught her attention, one that had nothing to do with the canon. She looked up.

“The door unlocked.”

“What? Alright! I don’t know why, but, I’m not questioning it.”

“Vaporizing that monster must have deactivated the lock down,” she said. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Lean on me.”

They limped their way to the door, stomping through the flesh and gore that Nemesis had left behind. It had splattered all the way over here, painting trails of blood over half the room. Jill had her hand on the door when she heard the slithering behind her. She turned her head.

She thought the rail canon had hit Nemesis in the head for sure, but she was wrong. It oozed towards her now, nothing but a single thrashing leg and a new mouth, spitting acid over its teeth.

If they just ran for it now, before the sensors tripped and locked the door again, they would be home free. Nemesis was in no state to follow them. It was the smart choice, the pragmatic choice. The call Wesker would have made, if he were there.

It wouldn't be enough, not for her. This thing had been dogging her for the worst three solid days of her life, had killed too many good people, and caused her too much grief. She wanted it dead.

A glitter on the floor nearby caught her attention, sitting beside the outstretched hand of a fallen soldier.

She dumped Carlos against the door, cutting off his exclamation of disbelief mid-sentence. Then she ran forward, rolling out of the path of Nemesis’ acid spray, and grabbed the magnum off the ground. From her crouch she fired two quick shots into the Nemesis, weathering the gun’s harsh recoil between shots. The monster cringed and thrashed with each bullet, as it never had before.

Like a righteous angel of vengeance she stood up, closing in on the writhing worm Nemesis had become, and fired shot after shot into what was left of its body. One for Brad, one for Mikhail, one for the chopper pilot...

“You want S.T.A.R.S.? I’ll give you S.T.A.R.S.”

And one for her. After that final bullet, the last in the gun, Nemesis screamed and thrashed and then lay still, its singed and burned and torn flesh steaming lightly. She watched the body for a moment, waiting, just in case.

“I think,” Carlos said haltingly form the door, “I think you got it, Jill.”

She stowed the empty magnum in her pack, and walked away. Carlos was waiting right where she’d left him, collapsed against the door, head twisted around to watch her.

“S.T.A.R.S. are really something else,” he said as she lifted his arm onto her shoulder, anchoring herself to him like a living crutch.

We used to be, she thought to herself, and couldn’t quite manage a smile.

They opened the door together. By some fickle streak of fortune, the door led straight out into an elevator, so Carlos didn’t have to hobble far. It was an industrial lift, the kind that had railings instead of an enclosure. A punch of a button sent them speeding upwards, towards the surface.

“Looks like I owe you,” Carlos said.

“Think of it as payback for all the times you saved me,” she said.

“If we’re keeping score, I think I’m still ahead.”

“I’ll buy you a drink some time.”

Carlos laughed. “I’ll take that.”

Time was running out, making the slow pace dictated by Carlos’s injury even more excruciating. He hobbled out from the elevator at a good clip, all things considered, the pain dulled by adrenaline. At last, they were out of the dead factory.

As they stood looking around the waste dumped up around the building, Jill heard the sweetest sound she had ever heard: the hum of helicopter blades. If, after all that, the mysterious rescuer turned out to be another Umbrella goon after her head, well. She still had plenty of ammo in her pistol.

“They’re here. They’re really here, they came for you!” Carlos said.

“But who is it?”

The chopper, a slender blue and white model without any kind of logo, came in to land neatly in front of them. Jill helped Carlos up inside and then hopped in herself. They collapsed into their seats, both moving in a haze of disbelief. Carlos thunked his head back against the cockpit wall. Then the chopper was rising, leaving the cursed earth of Raccoon City behind them.

“Thank you. You saved our lives,” Jill said, leaning forward. She still couldn’t get a good look at the pilot from this angle. He was male, burly, with a black cap and an orange vest.

“Did you think I could leave you to die?” the pilot turned, giving her a good view of his bearded profile.

“Is...is it...?”

 _Barry_.

Jill could hardly breathe through the swell of emotion clogging her throat. Someone had come back for her. Someone hadn’t forgotten her, hadn’t left her to fend for herself. He could have stayed safe in Canada with his family and she never would have blamed him. But somehow, he had heard about what happened to Raccoon, and he had come here, just to make sure she got out okay.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “Everything’s about to be finished.”

Jill plastered herself to the window, where she could watch the glowing orange projectile launching over the horizon, a miniature sun beating Sol to the dawn. The countdown hadn’t been wrong. They had less than a minute left before impact.

“It’s coming!” she said.

“Yeah,” Barry agreed. He looked down at his watch. “It’s the end.”

The missile passed them, heading straight on target to the heart of Raccoon. Once again, all the evidence of Umbrella’s crimes, its monstrosities, would be wiped away in a cleansing wall of fire. It would keep the plague from spreading to neighboring cities, but the obvious cover-up left a sour taste in her mouth. Would anyone believe the survivors of Raccoon, when they told their story? Or would they be ridiculed and hunted, just like the S.T.A.R.S. had?

She had to turn her face away from the impact, as the sky outside the windows flared white. The noise of it was deafening, several orders of magnitude louder than the blast that had consumed the Spencer Mansion. A massive ball of fire spread outwards from the city center, consuming every last street and building of the city. Jill cried out as the turbulence from the shock wave rattled the chopper.

“That’s it,” she hissed, looking back one last time at the mushroom cloud where her home city used to stand. “Umbrella is going down.”

 

Chris had been right about one thing: it was time to take the fight to the source.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm describing the rail canon as it appeared in the game, instead of anything approaching realism. Ahh, the 90s. I also decided to have Carlos tag along for the final fight, because he didn't get to do very much in the original game.


	8. Epilogues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end! This was my love/hate letter to Resident Evil 3, and thank you all for joining me on this adventure. I hope I've been able to spread a little love for the badass that is Jill Valentine, may she star in another game some day. As usual, I couldn't resist tacking a couple epilogues on. Thank you everyone for your comments and kudos! Your support means a lot to me.

Jill was in Italy when she got the phone call, fresh off another cold lead in her search for Chris. Just that morning she had found Chris's combat knife in an empty hotel room, the blade crusted with dry blood. There had been no other signs of him or his mystery attacker.

So, when a young male voice greeted her with: “Is this Jill Valentine?”, her heart seized in fear. They'd found her, she had thought, and this time Umbrella would send a monster twice as indomitable and persistent as Nemesis to wipe her off the planet.

“Please don't hang up,” he continued at her silence. “I know who's hunting you, and why you're hiding. I'm not with them. My name is Leon Kennedy, and I found the note in your desk at the S.T.A.R.S. office.”

She collapsed into a chair. That note had been left at the start of the whole outbreak, which meant this man could only be a Raccoon City survivor.

“How did you find me?”

“I've been trying to help a friend track down a different S.T.A.R.S. ghost, and I saw you at the scene this morning.”

Chris. Her fingers clenched and unclenched around the phone receiver. None of this information ruled the caller out as an Umbrella agent. Yet, she wanted so much to believe him.

“I'd like to meet, if we could,” he said.

If he was an Umbrella agent, then they'd cooked up the perfect bait. She knew the risks, but she couldn't pass up the chance to meet someone who could understand, finally, her long living nightmare. Maybe that was what she had really been searching for, the reason she was so anxious to find Chris all this time.

“The Paranoia Cafe,” she said at once. “Come alone. If I see anything the least bit funny, I'm going to turn around and leave.”

“I understand. 3 o'clock good? I'll be the one holding the joke book.”

She agreed, and hung up. Maybe this was a mistake. She was finding it hard to care.

 

Leon was a titian blond who looked like he missed his calling as a shampoo model. He'd gotten a seat at one of the outdoor tables and was standing the book “101 Shark Jokes” on end with one finger, rocking it back and forth instead of reading it.

She sat down across from him without greeting or preamble, and he gave her a tired smile. It was hard to imagine an Umbrella agent having eyes that warm. He looked to be about her age, maybe a couple years younger.

“Glad you could make it. I hope I didn't scare you too badly.”

“You really found my note?” she asked.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded square of paper, so worn it had a hole fraying at the corners. She took it from him, unfolded it with delicate, almost reverent motions. Sure enough, there were the harsh angles of her hurried handwriting, lambasting Raccoon City for everything they had failed to do.

“It helped, a little. Afterward. Made me feel like I wasn't alone in this, you know? So I kept it. I hope you don't mind.”

“I was so angry when I wrote this.” She shook her head. “We tried to warn everyone, but they just wouldn't _listen_ , and now...”

Now Raccoon City was a smoking crater.

“Yeah,” he said. Just one word, but it communicated so much understanding.

“How did you find it?” she asked, a nicer way of asking, “why were you pawing through my old desk?”

“I was just starting at the R.C.P.D. Traffic division. It was my first day, but I overslept and came in late. Really late. That was on September 29th.”

The day after the outbreak overwhelmed the police force. She would have been unconscious in the church by then, fighting off the infection of the T-virus.

“I met another survivor there,” Leon continued. “Claire Redfield. She had come to town looking for her brother, Chris.”

Oh, god.

“Claire? Claire was in Raccoon?”

“She's okay, don't worry. We both got out okay, with another survivor. She's still looking for Chris even now. You know, we must have turned that S.T.A.R.S. office upside down looking for more information about him. We also found this.” He reached into his front pocket, and pulled out a photograph.

It was Rebecca in a green basketball uniform, smiling at the camera as she posed with a basketball.

“I don't know if it means anything to you.”

“Where did you find this?” Jill demanded, nonplussed.

“The captain's desk at the front of the room.”

Jill's eyes narrowed. What the hell Captain Wesker had been doing with this picture in his desk, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

“It's our rookie team member. She quit after the Arklay incident and left Raccoon. I'm not sure where she is now.” She had almost forgotten about quiet Rebecca. Maybe, when she got back to the States, she'd try to look the medic up. It wasn't good for all of them to stay scattered to the four winds. They needed to support each other.

“I didn't actually mean to take that with me. I just forgot it was in my pocket. You can have it, if you want.”

“I'll get it back to her.” She slipped the picture into her purse. After a moment of hesitation, she held the old letter out to him.

“It's fine. I don't need it anymore.”

She put the letter in her purse as well.

“Is Claire in Europe?”

“France, last I heard. She only contacts me sporadically. I'm a little worried that she might do something rash.”

“The Umbrella headquarters is in Paris,” Jill said. “I was planning to head there next.”

“Not a bad idea. I’d like to give you my contact information. So you can stay in touch, if you want.” He handed her a plain business card, with nothing but a name, phone number, and email address.

“Start a support group?” she asked dryly as she took his card.

“I know you’re joking, but I would like that.” He stood to go. “ I have to get back to my new job, but I'm going to keep searching whenever I can.”

She needed to get back on the hunt, as well. “I guess I should be more careful. If you could find me, then...”

He nodded. “Take care of yourself, Ms. Valentine.”

“Call me Jill.”

There was that smile again, warm and boyish, somehow reminding her of a puppy.

“Leon.”

She stayed at the cafe for a while after he left, just listening to the chatter of people speaking rapid Italian, the clatter of cups and plates on tables and the rumble of passing cars. The normal world still didn’t quite feel real, no matter how much she made herself stop and breathe it all in.

“Support group, huh?” she mumbled to herself. “Yeah. Maybe.”

 

* * *

 

 

The walls at 6th Lab were a clinical white, shiny and reflective enough that one had to question whether Umbrella let janitors into its top secret research labs after all. Compared to the practical poured concrete and green tile of Arklay, the facility looked like a palace plucked from some 70s science fiction pulp. Through this white expanse a figure in black walked at a brisk pace, vanishing conveniently around a corner or into a shadow anytime a group of scientists came near.

The figure paused before the carelessly ajar door of a meeting room, where he stood listening. Most of the voices leaking from the room blended into a bland soup of deep, uneasy tones, but one or two rose over the noise.

“--yes, fine, I admit it did not succeed in destroying all the targets. But, the project is still a success! Gentlemen, you must look at its performance, not simply its results. We gave it a single goal, and it chased that goal with unshaken focus. Not once did the Nemesis lose control or get distracted. This is something we've been trying to accomplish for years, without success," a reedy voice, high and passionate, spoke in rapid french.

"I hate to repeat myself, but that single goal was to kill just two people, and it only managed half of that. What good is a supposedly unstoppable killing machine if it can't even eliminate one young woman?" asked a deeper voice.

"Oh? And how well did all of your human operatives do against her? Last I checked, she was still alive!"

Had an observer been present in the hallway, they might have noticed the smug smirk curling up the corner of the dark figure's lips.

"Alive, yes! She's out there, god knows where, waiting to strike at any time," said a new voice. "Your Nemesis was supposed to prevent this!"

"Then give me the time and the funds to improve the project. There is nothing wrong with the theory. As long as we can successfully join any subject with the NE-1 parasite--"

"We all agree that the parasite works, Dr. Dubois, and the specimen chosen was our top choice. I'm questioning the subsequent training and programming which the subject was given. You can order a loyal dog to shoot a gun, but it does no good if the mutt can't even hold the thing, eh?"

"I do not know what you're trying to imply, Garcia," Dr. Dubois said. "Nemesis was perfectly capable of--"

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Enough bickering. We shall put the incident under full review, and, pending the result of our inquest, decide whether or not the Nemesis project is worth continuing. It will be difficult--” this deeper voice, the director, plowed on over Dr. Dubois’ protests, “With all the supervisors KIA, we have no first-hand accounts of what happened down there. All we have to go on are the progress reports sent by agent Zinoviev before we lost contact.”

“Are we pursuing Zinoviev?”

“The man’s loyalty is not under question, and he had no reason to run. We must assume he is dead, like the others,” the director said.

“Holy blood, what a nightmare.”

“I tell you one last time, the Nemesis is not at fault. Every one of our tests demonstrated a 100% success rate. If you shut the project down now, you will be making a grave mistake,” Dr. Dubois said.

“Your comments are noted, doctor. That’s enough for today.”

The men filed out of the room to an apparently empty hallway, their dark eavesdropper vanished from sight. One scientist stayed behind, his hands planted on his hips as he glared at the image of Nemesis projected on the screen.

“Morons, all of them,” he muttered to himself. “There was nothing wrong with my prototype.”

He did not notice when the door clicked softly closed, nor did he hear the dark figure approaching him until the man spoke.

"Dr. Dubois, isn't it?"

The good doctor jumped and whipped around. His eyes widened as the other man calmly closed the distance between them.

"What--who are you? How did you get in to this facility?"

"You don't recognize me? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It has been several years, after all." He came to a stop at the head of the table, his head angled towards the doctor. "We all get so cagey about our personal projects."

Dr. Dubois bent his head forward, squinting, visibly working to place a name to the face before him.

"You're...? No, it can't be. Everyone from Arklay is dead by now."

"Rumors and exaggeration, as you can see." The man gestured to himself. He turned his head away, to the image of Nemesis' lipless snarl. "It really was an excellent piece of work. You simply made the mistake of setting It after the wrong people."

"Mistake?" Dr. Dubois hissed. "I made no mistakes. He was perfect! Smart enough to use any weapon! Enough persistent memory to track targets, even to plan ambushes and head them off! Perfectly obedient to my orders! Your tyrant program was a joke compared to him."

"Your pride and joy, I'm sure. I suppose you did most of the programming yourself?"

"All of it! How could I entrust something so delicate to the dunderheads that work under me?"

Albert Wesker pulled a silenced pistol from his coat. "Good. Then I won't have to track down anyone else."

He waited until the doctor turned around to see death pointed at him before pulling the trigger. A moment of indulgence on his part, treating himself to the other man's expression of shocked terror before the bullet carved a path through his skull and splattered his brains all over the table.

The body slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and Wesker put his pistol away.

"It is a shame I did not have the time to drag this out as much as I wanted, after what your little pet put me through," he told the cooling corpse. “Unfortunately, I still have other appointments to keep.” He left the room, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

As he made his way out, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked the caller ID and smiled, but did not answer. Once the buzzing stopped and the call went to voicemail, he listened to the message that had been left.

"Ffffucking hell, captain," said a slurred, female voice. "I thought the guys at your Arklay labor--laborador--labs were were creepy. Let me tell you about the lab in _Milan_."

 

Fin

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paranoia Cafe is a real place that actually exists, and as soon as I saw it in the search results I decided I had to set it as their meeting place.


End file.
